Tuesday, 23rd February 2021 — In many multifarious communities worldwide, we do not often talk about mental healthcare when it concerns our relatives. We skirt around the subject, ignore discussing the matter and hope the dilemma will just disappear. But, it never does.
When the equilibrium of a loved one’s mental conditions is challenging, we become bewildered and often know not how to help them. We fail to recognise the irreparable harm caused to this person – and also for ourselves and family when we don’t deal with these problems. Why do we hide in the closet when one of our kin is challenged to maintain what is considered to be a normal mental health balance?
Stable minds are vital to everyone’s overall wellbeing. Yet, we do not cope openly when one of our own exhibits bipolar, schizophrenic, split personality, anger management or other psychological imbalances. Is it because we neglect to care for ourselves in this area?
We stigmatise persons who are mentally challenged, using words such as, “she’s crazy” or “he lost his marbles”. All kinds of insensitive comments and unreasonable excuses are made for people’s intemperate behaviours. If the person is a child, we use age as a reason to ignore the issue.
When we don’t address the situation from young, it becomes of really grave concern when the girl or boy becomes an adult. By then, it may be too late to do anything to cure what ails our beloved ones. Besides, there are laws put in place that limit what we, as relations, may do to intercede on behalf of related persons when they’ve reached adulthood and need mental healthcare.
We can encourage our family members to seek therapy with trained and licensed psychologists, psychotherapists and psychiatrists who are knowledgeable in a variety of traditional and non-traditional healing methodologies. However, they’re not guaranteed of receiving the most suitable care for their mental disorders. Some may be given psychotic drugs. These medications are extremely addictive, altering their minds’ state of reality.
As in all areas of healthcare, people with mental health illnesses might be misdiagnosed and given treatment plans that are inappropriate for their specific conditions. Certain healthcare practitioners may be negligent in their duties, further exacerbating the patients’ situations.
Decades ago, women and indigent individuals were locked away at the whims of husbands, brothers, uncles or others who had guardianship over them – merely because they behaved differently or didn’t conform to the society’s normal standards of behaviour. It didn’t mean these persons had any mental health issues nor were they exhibiting lunacy.
This malpractice of locking up people in mental healthcare facilities, previously named insane asylums, and conducting unethical experiments on them, has been documented throughout antiquity across the globe. Contemporary films, like The Professor and the Madman viewed on Netflix, tell their life stories.
Interned patients are put behind bars, given experimental shock therapy treatments, and subjected to all kinds of tests that haven’t been proven to cure their mental conditions. Oftentimes institutionalised patients die, which seems to be happening frequently in the UK during this 21st century.
People’s brains have been studied by medical professionals, over centuries, trying to figure out what’s the root of these mental health imbalances. There are no straightforward answers nor steps to follow that are best practices for every case or circumstance.
I have dealt with mental health concerns within my own extended clan along with the families of friends in Anguilla, England and the USA. Each country and every healthcare facility have various regulations governing the area of mental healthcare as well as for crisis intervention.
The one aspect that I am consciously aware of, is how dealing with mental health situations amongst family members ultimately causes a significant amount of trauma for anyone involved in such affairs. Relatives who are of sound mind are traumatised by the kinfolk who exhibit outbursts, threaten to kill persons and behave irrationally.
Being exposed to these kinds of incidents causes wear and tear on our psyches. We experience post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms that we may not even be consciously aware exist.
In 2021, many of us are coping with relatives who have mild to severe mental health complications. How do we deal with these seriously challenging situations? How do we assist them to obtain the best therapeutic healing care?
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Kay M Ferguson is a mindful writer, who writes under the nom de plume Empress Extraordinaire, composing words to enlighten and uplift humanity. Connect with her on social media — Facebook and LinkedIn or email anguillawriter@gmail.com.
