COLUMN: Let’s Talk Mental Health – Mental illness doesn’t discriminate

Let’s talk again about mental illnesses. We know they affect our thinking because they are illnesses of the brain. A shortage or lack of necessary chemicals make us unable to regulate moods and thinking becomes unrealistic or faulty.

Mental illness, just like physical illness, doesn’t discriminate. It happens to anyone, of any nationality or ethnic background, employed or unemployed, professional or blue-collar, wealthy or poor, young or old, educated or not. According to the World Health Organization, since 2020 depression alone has become the second leading cause of illness and disability, eclipsed only by heart disease.

The most common forms are anxiety disorders, mood disorders, and schizophrenia disorders. The various anxiety disorders are the most prevalent. The person with such a disorder experiences severe fear or anxiety linked to particular situations or objects. Most people with an anxiety disorder try to avoid exposure to their anxiety triggers.

Panic disorder involves sudden paralyzing terror or feelings of imminent disaster. Phobias may include simple phobias (disproportionate fear of objects), social phobias (fear of judgment by others), and agoraphobia (dread of situations involving difficulty getting away or breaking free). People with OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) experience stressful thoughts and powerful urges to perform repetitive acts to allay those fearful thoughts. PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) can occur after surviving a traumatic event and then experiencing the fear of no control over events or life, accompanied by flashbacks of the initial trauma.

Mood disorders are also known as affective disorders or depressive disorders because they involve disturbances or changes in mood, such as mania (overabundance of energy and elation) or depression (loss of energy and motivation). Experts report approximately 80 percent of patients with a depressive disorder can improve significantly with the right treatment. Examples of mood disorders include major depression, bipolar disorder, dysthymia, and SAD (seasonal affective disorder).

With major depression the ill person loses interest and no longer enjoys previously fulfilling activities and events. It’s usually accompanied by extreme or prolonged periods of sadness or low mood. Bipolar disorder used to be known as manic-depressive illness or manic depression. In it the person’s moods cycle, usually over weeks or months, between episodes of euphoria (mania) and depression (extreme sadness). Dysthymia is basically a mild chronic depression. The person feels ill and experiences a lack of interest in activities he or she once enjoyed, but not as severely as in major depression. SAD is a type of major depression triggered by lack of daylight at certain times of the year. People living in countries far from the equator can be very depressed during late autumn, winter, and early spring.

Much remains to be learned about schizophrenia disorders. Is it a single disorder or part of a group of related illnesses? It’s a complex illness. Most people experience the onset of schizophrenia between 15 and 25 years of age. The person has fragmented thoughts and finds it hard to process information. Schizophrenia can have negative or positive symptoms. Positive symptoms are delusions, thought disorders, and hallucinations, while negative symptoms include withdrawal from friends and family, lack of motivation, and a flat mood.

People often ask

Q. Why do people with mental illness try to hide it from family and friends?

A. Acceptance of certain groups of people has improved over recent decades, especially for people with AIDS, cancer, different racial backgrounds, or with physical disabilities. Sadly, this tolerance needs to be extended fully to people with mental illnesses. Stigma still surrounds mental illness for several reasons.

Mental illnesses are often invisible, frequently manifested through behaviour changes. Not everyone can choose, and therefore control, how they behave, think, and feel. People fear what they don’t understand. It’s only recently that we understand mental illness is biological illness, just like cancers, diabetes, arthritis, or heart disease.

Stigmatizing words like psycho, schizo, retard, mad, loony, and others are still too common and reinforce negative stereotypes. People with mental illnesses often expect to be marginalized, discriminated against, or ridiculed because of ignorance and stigma. Therefore, they may pretend all is well, even when they are very ill.