Do you know when your mind has been compromised? This is one of the most challenging questions about life that medical science has courageously answered, despite the fact that theology, philosophy, anthropology and sociology may not agree.
Psychiatry as a medical discipline has had the enormous responsibility of determining the normal state of the mind. Although its basic root is in the biological sciences, the study of psychiatry has helped the human race to answer the question with a strong sociological flavour.
The mind is the most crucial aspect of a human being. Man can perform many wonders when he is visually impaired, but he is completely rattled when the functions of the mind are disturbed.
However, as much as we treat matters of the mind with levity, we paradoxically demonstrate its importance in many aspects of our lives. For instance, many marriage proposals have been unfairly aborted due to an unconfirmed history of mental illness in the family of a potential husband or wife. I am aware that some state governments have compiled the names of individuals who have visited psychiatrists before, so that they could be laid off in case of staff rationing.
For breaking traffic rules, some people have been threatened with the label ‘mentally ill’, even as political office holders commit the same offence with impunity. In a situation where a political opponent appears stronger than the incumbent, his career may be shattered as soon as the evidence of a past visit to a psychiatrist is established.
Also, the contemporary African tradition appears to discredit any family that is involved in a struggle for kingship, if they are biologically linked to a mentally ill.
This premise for determining the abnormality of the mind in Africa is not only spurious but also inconsistent and often abused.
The situation could be likened to the ‘witchhunt’ scenario of the church around the 18th century that saw the inhuman confinement of individuals with sound minds into lunatic asylums.
Our belief in the world of the spirit has made the recognition of mental illness very difficult for the public. While some have been wrongly labelled, a good number of folks suffering mental illness have been concealed. The critical but vague distinction between faith and delusion has been the breeding ground for mental illness in Africa. Some pastors have ‘colonised’ the minds of their followers by claiming to hear spirits from ‘above”. Beautiful marriages have been destroyed, while promising careers sacrificed when a treatable mental ailment is not appropriately addressed.
There is something wrong with the mind when a man threatens his wife with a cutlass after an argument, but we often excuse such behaviour as the manifestation of anger and disagreement.
In a very religious country like Nigeria, I often see cases where mentally ill patients are subjected to long hours of prayers, fasting or strenuous religious activities before they are taken to psychiatrists.
Some abnormal behavioural patterns are peculiar to certain cultures, but they are no less symptoms of mental illnesses in a sense that they incapacitate folks from fulfilling their roles.
Everyone should have a high index of pragmatic suspicion when an unusual behaviour is displayed. We cannot continue to employ our cultural and inconsistent religious criteria to diagnose and treat mental illness. This becomes very necessary because mental illness can be properly managed and the patient can live a successful life thereafter. Science has now established the fact that the voices that the mentally ill hear can disappear when they take the right drugs.
Remember, psychiatric consultation is not meant only for the mentally ill; it is also meant for those who have distressful experiences, such as disturbances in sleep, nightmares, altered appetite for food and sex or crawling sensations in people’s heads.
PUNCH.
