Fuad: Mental illness root of social problems

“Eleven thousand people is nothing if you look at the catchment of the South- West Regional Health Authority. It is about four to 600,000 people and you look at 100,000 with mental illness, it is actually one in four,” he told Sunday Newsday.

At the launch of the TT Association for the Improvement of Mental Health at the San Fernando Hill Conference Centre on Friday, Pooran told reporters that apart from the estimated 11,000 people registered at psychiatric outpatient clinics in the south west region, 100 new people access services at San Fernando General Hospital’s mental health department on a monthly basis.

Khan said when he was appointed health minister in 2011, he had looked at statistics which showed that one in four people suffered from some form of mental illness.

He said depression proved to be one of the more prominent forms of mental illness.

“Yet people try to drive it under the rug.” Saying mental illness does not suggest that a patient must be hospitalised or institutionalised, Khan lamented there was still too much ignorance and stigmatisation associated with the condition “A lot of domestic violence occurs as a result of mental illness.

So, if you look at the whole spectra, you will see that mental illness is the foundation of a lot of problems in the society.

“But as usual, people just write it off because a mentally ill person looks normal. They don’t say they have chest pains, diabetes.

They not swelling.

They don’t have problems to look at but the brain is dysfunctional.

People with mental health issues look normal but internally, they are sick.” For example, he said a recent World Health Organisation bulletin presented statistics which showed the majority of ten to 19-year-olds suffer from depression, even more than adults.

To address this dilemma and others, Khan said a new Mental Health Act was being drafted.