The stigma of mental illness – Al-Watan Journal

As I have mentioned in previous articles, both soul and body get sick as a result of many biological, psychological and social causes, but when it comes to soul sickness the problem differs, can -being due to the strangeness of psychological and mental symptoms in form and content, which can lead in some disorders to lack of insight and judgment. On the other hand, the causes of mental disorders are multiple and cannot be subjected to purely medical imaging and analysis, and do not lend themselves to precise quantification, such as bodily diseases, which have led to the emergence of many explanations for the causes of this group of disorders, including metaphysical issues, and other civilizational and cultural issues, and may have been related. With the personal problems belonging to the same person, to which there are explanations, the question does not stop at this causal limit only, but expands to include the treatment of these disorders, of which there were many, and can be misunderstood due to the interpretations and understanding surrounding these disorders, all of which have led to the emergence of what is known as stigma. “Stigma” attached to mental illness as a result of a lack of knowledge of the causes of these disorders and methods of treatment, which has led to an intolerant “Social Distance”, “Intolerance”, represented in the form of negative tendencies towards mental illness. Here is the stigma !!!

The stigma of mental illness goes beyond its negative directional limit, both individual and societal, to translate into a “pathological” illness that prevents those with psychological symptoms from seeking treatment. The suffering of those who suffer from mental disorders worsens, worsens the poor quality of life and helps to keep the psychological disorder “active” despite The presence of treatment causes frequent pathological setbacks, “relapses”, and represents a heavy burden on the patient himself, his family and the whole health system. Therefore, “stigma” was a disease in its own right and required therapeutic intervention to eliminate “de-stigma”, through effective therapeutic treatment against the stigma of mental illness with professionalism and related programs , many psychiatric clinics in the West have been closed, and the mentally ill in particular have been treated by integrated basic health care centers and community mental health services. A community of human societies is not free from this incurable disease (the stigma of mental illness), but there is no doubt about the degree, so the stigma of mental illness has received great attention from the part of researchers, professionals and health decision-makers with the aim of eliminating it because of the great impact it has on development and strengthening. Mental health and ways to prevent and treat illnesses.

Our society suffers from the stigma associated with mental illness like all other societies. In 1997, I published scientific papers in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry (IJSP) on the stigma of a common mental symptom, namely “auditory hallucinations” in schizophrenic patients among a sample of British society and Saudi Arabian, as well as Psychological Professionals in the community, and the results were that the stigma of our mental illness is high among the general population, and even mental health professionals. In 2008, I conducted a study in the same background published in the Arab Journal of Psychiatry on the attitudes of medical students towards mental illness before the start of their “Clerkship” training in Psychiatry, and after it the results indicated the presence of the mental illness stigma they had before and after completing training, meaning that the training was not effective in changing their attitudes towards the illness m entale after its end, and medical students are originally a social group, representing the rest of the public, and the result is due to social extension that has not affected There is training.

The case did not end at this point. Clinical researcher and psychologist Abrar Ad-Dawish and I published a scientific article several days ago in the Journal of Neurology, “EC Neurology” on the stigma of mental illness in mental health. ‘a Saudi sample, which discussed their concepts on the causes of mental illness and its treatment methods, as well as their trends in the social dimension in terms of social care of the psychiatric patient, and the results indicate tangible progress in the understanding of the causes of mental illness and methods of treatment compared to what was published in 1997, but the social dimension has not changed for two decades and more, which leads to Due to the existence of the “Mental illness stigma” in our society, it has not changed or changed, and its burning spark extends to the mental health sector’s lag in its developmental analyzes, promo tional, preventive and curative.

Research findings like these point to gaps in the existence of targeted and thoughtful psychological awareness programs aimed at addressing the stigma of mental illness by eliminating it, achieving the principle of sustainable mental health for all, to reduce the waste of curative health, to treat the psychiatric patient in his social fabric and to treat him as a person suffering from a curable disease, to treat and accept it, and to facilitate What would contribute to his mental health, would facilitate access to psychological services when needed, and to the development and promotion of mental health, the issue, my dear friends, is more global and broader than the simple therapeutic dimension, which is not is not without flaws, to include the dimension of psychological awareness.

I firmly hope that I will do a fourth research in a short period of time, to see that the stigma of mental illness has been cut back by a “trained psychological surgeon” who knows that mental health does not mean the absence of disease. , but rather a state of overall psychological harmony, and that it is possible to make the general public healthy, rather We are happy, and that mental illness is preventable and treatable when it appears, and that there is no immunity from mental illness for anyone. Everyone is in the folds of amputating the “unfair social stigma” associated with mental illness, as long as you are in sustainable mental health.