Expert: mental patients need support & medicine
In the eyes of many, all the men and women who aimlessly wander the streets of Belize can easily be dismissed as “crazy”, “crack heads” or “drunkards”. But passing judgment is a lot easier than confronting the problem of mental illness in this country. And as News 5’s Jacqueline Woods discovered, more than medicines, patients need their family’s support.
Kurt Nicholas, Mental Health Patient
?Then I find out, I myself am wondering why I can?t be a human part of life and I am not born mental, to find out what is destroying me.?
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
According to experts, there are approximately fifteen thousand people in Belize suffering from mental disorders. The condition affects both the young and the old, and many of them have a difficult time living some semblance of a normal life. Mental health patients are not only shunned by society, but a large number of these men and women have been turned away by their own families, leaving the state solely responsible to care for the mentally ill. But the country?s only mental health institution is grappling with its own reality. The infrastructure at Rockview remains in a dilapidated condition. There are not enough beds for its fifty-six residents and the run down condition of the facility makes it easy for patients to escape. There is a plan to improve the care but nothing has materialized. And all the while, the need for the vital service increases.
It is not sure what contributed to thirty-nine year old Kurt Nicholas? mental health problem, but it has gotten him into trouble with the law and he has been in and out of the institution for several years. Nicholas says he understands why people would have a difficult time understanding patients like himself or even feeling comfortable in their company.
Kurt Nicholas, Mental Health Patient
?Well it?s hard to explain that because it is sad too that is why sometimes I freak out, I keep myself dirty and sometimes I beg people for things and I act strange because then my own family reject me.?
Thirty-nine year old Ramona Francisco has been diagnosed with Schizophrenia, but it is believed that it was a blow to her head over twenty years ago that aggravated the condition. For the past four months she has been at the institution.
Ramona Francisco, Mental Health Patient
?I heard voices, I cannot sleep. I heard a lot of things and then I conscious I was getting a nervous breakdown.?
Francisco admits she does get violent when she is having an attack but says if she would get the constant care she needs, she would get better.
Ramona Francisco
?Yes, mam, the family is very important too. The friends are very important too, right. The friends are more important than the family. I can talk to my friends more than my family.?
Dr. Claudina Cayetano, a psychiatrist in the Ministry of Health explains why the public should be more tolerant and understanding of people suffering from mental illness.
Dr. Claudina Cayetano, Psychiatrist, MOH
?It?s devastating by suffering a mental illness. Suffering on your own and having absolutely no support can really hinder the recovery. So it is very important to be tolerant and understanding that people who have mental illness is not because they want to; it?s an illness.?
Dr. Cayetano admits that the Rockview institution is not a place conducive to healing. Although nothing has been built to replace the structure, she says steps are being made to facilitate that process. Today there are mental health clinics in the districts including the establishment of an acute psychiatric clinic in Belmopan.
Dr. Claudina Cayetano
?The government do have plans from the health sectary form to be able to have a facility that would host chronic patients. There are also plans to have a hospital; there are plans for occupational centre and there are plans for an acute psychiatric unit in Belize City.?
It is also encouraging to note that people who have experienced mental illness have formed their own support throughout the country. However, the lack of family involvement continues to be an overwhelming problem. Rockview supervisor, Nurse Yvonne Haylock says besides the medication, it also helps when a patient receive care from their loved ones.
Nurse Yvonne L. Haylock, Supervisor, Rockview
?Here we just can?t do without that. We have discovered that patient?s whose family play a strong supportive part in the recovery of their love ones, they do better. They are able to function much better and that?s what I would appeal for the family to do; support your loved ones.?
Kurt Nicholas, Mental Health Patient
?Well my opinion for mental people is to start function. Let the people that is in present that is not mental, they could look at the one who is mental and say just for an exchange, I could be just like that person, but the main thing for us to do for we as humans, once you remain as humans, its love. There is not enough love people get hurt.?
Jacqueline Woods reporting for News 5.
Every year, the World Federation for Mental Health sets aside a special week to observe Mental health. The day which is commemorated on October tenth is observed with a number of activities in over one hundred countries. This year the focus is the importance of physical health and its relation to mental health. Dr. Cayetano says too often people who are diagnosed with illnesses such as cancer usually have a difficult time coping with the sickness and as such does affect the patient’s mental health.
