Mental health: more than “crazy people”
On yesterday’s newscast we travelled to the Youth Hostel to hear first hand from young people with behavioural problems. Today, on the closing day of Mental Health Week, News 5’s Patrick Jones met with the officials and practitioners who formulate and execute the nation’s policies on mental health.
Patrick Jones, Reporting
We see them walking the streets day and night and often dismiss them as just crazy people. But officials of the Mental Health Association say that attitude only worsens the problem.
Jennifer Lovell, President, Mental Health Association
“Yes, it absolutely hurts rather than help. See, someone who is suffering say from depression, that’s a mental disorder. But is the person crazy? It simply means that that person may have been born with a chemical imbalance, and its not that they are crazy, they are suffering from a chemical imbalance, their brain just has a tweak, something that when they were born they had too much dopamine or something that makes then constantly sad. But they are not a danger to anyone. Even people who are schizophrenic, once they are on medication, they are not a danger to anyone. Yet we kick them out of jobs, we kick them out of homes. We lock them up. There are several people in prison who are mentally ill, what they need is treatment rather than being locked up.”
While there are no hard data on the number of people who are not sailing on an even keel, Minister of Health Jose Coye says his government is taking concrete steps to ensure that mentally ill people are treated with dignity.
Jose Coye, Minister of Health
“This government has committed over three million dollars in investment in infrastructure. Firstly, we need to develop the acute psychiatric clinics in the country, because we try to stop it from going to the chronic stage. I think you are aware of the days gone by when we had the one here up at the Barracks. That was the chronic stage and then we move to the Rockview.”
“The Ministry of Health under this government is certainly taking mental health as something that we should be very concerned about and to treat it with the preventive strategy as we are doing for every aspect of health.”
In a symbolic show of support for people affected by mental disorders, the Belize Mental Health Association this morning sponsored its annual balloon lift off, sending dozens of helium-filled coloured rubbers into the mid morning sky.
Jennifer Lovell
“It signifies the lifting of burdens, it’s almost like letting your cares go away. But is also a liberation of the human spirit. The Mental Health Association is committed to getting rid of the stigma and discrimination against people who suffer mental illness.”
And for Lovell, the releasing of burdens is more than just symbolic.
Jennifer Lovell
“You know what our dreams is? That one day there won’t be a Rockview. People don’t need to be locked away and forgotten. If you come in with an acute problem, you treat it, you stay for a few days, you give them medication and they can go home to families. That’s where people with mental illness belong, in homes, not locked away.”
Patrick Jones, for News 5.
