Question

What myths around mental illness have you heard before? How do you think those myths might affect your ability to work with individuals with severe and persistent mental illness?

Answer 1

The belief in the presence of mental illnesses is as old as Greek mythology. There are mentions of abnormal behaviour in chinese, greek, hebrew and many more writings. Abnormal behaviour in those times was viewed as a consequence of possession of demons or angry gods. As a treatment for such issues, an abnormal person was subjected to exorcism, or indigenous rituals were carried out in places like India, China, Africa and so on.

Misconceptions such as the following existed during the early years of mankind:

1. Such patients don't sleep at night

2. There is presence of grandiosity at all times

3. Such illnesses does not affect children

4. Such people are dangerous and infectious

5. Parents are responsible for such illnesses

6. such illnesses are a result of bad karma in past life.

Famous philosophers such as Hippocrates denied the presence of deities or demon and instead treated mental illnesses as any other disease.

Hindrance caused by misconceptions and prejudices is one of the major drawback in the treatment of mental illnesses. Patients feel stigmatised to come and visit psychologists or psychiatrist and share their problems. Sometimes families of patients fail to provide much needed emotional support which discourages the patients to feel secure about their mental illness and come forward. In certain cases, having mental illness is perceived as deliberate harbouring of distorted thinking. Thus, the patient ends up being labeled as weak, incapable of taking up challenges in life.

All these above mentioned attitudes create hindrance in treatment. Psychologists have to spend more time spreading the awareness of vast presence of the same in the world, normalising the feeling of being stigmatised, making their subjects comfortable and so on.