Treat mental health issues like a disease, say experts

CHENNAI: The rate of suicides has seen a surge in Tamil Nadu with the State recording the second-highest number in the country.

On account of World Mental Health Day, experts emphasise the identification of symptoms impacting an individual by treating it as a disease.

Psychologists emphasize the need to employ more mental health care professionals to deal with this silent pandemic, treat it as a disease and provide the required treatment.

The experts were taking part in the national symposium organised by the Clinical Psychology Society of India on the topic of Mental Health and Well Being- Global priority at Ethiraj College for Women. Health Minister Ma Subramanian also spoke on the occasion.

Dr Prarthana Saraswathi, Consultant Psychiatrist, Rela Hospital said: "Health is physical, mental and social well-being. Mind and body are interconnected, just like how you can’t separate a brain from the body. When you have a broken bone you don’t hesitate to see a doctor and get it fixed.

You don’t take the broken bone person to a magical religious treatment centre or ask the injured person to talk themselves out of it. It’s the same for mental illness- you can’t ask a person with mental illness to get a grip, talk yourself out of it or just pray.

Doctors suggest that labelling suicide as an act performed by a person should rather be considered as a result of a chronic stress disease called depression. Suicide is seen as a choice these days instead of what it should be seen as a disease.

Emergency physician Dr A Mohamed Hakkim said: "Suicide rates are seeing an uptrend and a person with depression would have a hard time communicating why he is feeling low, or unable to do his work, despite everything being normal or better than normal in his regular life.

It is near impossible for a common man to explain why a person who has been diagnosed with depression is suddenly feeling a lack of will to carry further.

That’s why we have doctors-psychiatrists to diagnose and treat illnesses accordingly. Cancer is an illness which afflicts people by random chance, it just occurs. Similarly, depression also requires diagnosis and therapy by trained experts."

"The public talks about the problem instead of talking about the real problem.

For instance, if in an unfortunate incident a celebrity takes their own life, talks go around over every tea cup and dinner table about the incidents around it, rather than the actual problem, which is mental stress/illness. Instead of calling it what it is as “a disease," we are discussing it as an act of weakness," he added.

Health Minister Ma Subramanian participated in the national symposium organised by Clinical Psychology Society of India on the topic Mental health and Wellbeing – Global priority at Ethiraj College for Women.