Ugandans need mental health literacy

Several Ugandans tend to undermine their mental break-downs. PHOTO/FILE/COURTESY 

What you need to know:

  • Most importantly, each of us needs to support ourselves and others whose mental health is being affected negatively.

Communities and individuals need to appreciate that there is no health without mental health. 

Unfortunately, the level of understanding of mental health in our communities is still challenged as evidenced by how communities handle mental health challenges and cases. 

For instance, if someone suffers a mental breakdown, many start advancing unsubstantiated claims, and these are often treated as truth by an authority from another world, mostly, the spiritual world. 

The reactions of the family and community members towards mental health challenges are also varying and worrying. For a number of families, mental health challenges are linked to witchcraft while for the community, besides being perceived as witchcraft they treat it as drama to enjoy. 

Community members often probe mentally disturbed persons, asking them all sorts of funny, and dehumanising questions. They also spread rumours on whatever the mentally disturbed person would be speaking as gospel truth. 

On the other hand, it is sad that we even register cases where families or the public have attacked and sometimes killed others based on claims of mentally disturbed persons, as the causes of their problems. 

The mentally challenged persons in our communities often lose all their rights and privacy. They are treated like less human beings and made vulnerable to in human acts like rape if they are women especially when their families fail to protect them. 

Worse still, the community perception of mentally challenged persons even when they stabilise, remain marked by dehumanizing labels. Our main challenge is the lack of knowledge to understand, detect, and support our mental health and that of others. 

The New Vision newspaper recently published research attributed to the Ministry of Health indicating that 14 million Ugandans have mental health challenges. This is an epidemic. 

The literal understanding of an epidemic is an increase, often sudden, in the number of cases of a disease above what is normally expected in that population in that area. This is what it is in our communities. 
The month of May is globally dedicated to creating awareness about mental health and this year’s theme is: Mental health in an unequal world.  This comes as the world is dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic which impacted more of the most vulnerable people in communities. 

Stories of a number of people who were living on the margins of life, becoming worse are everywhere in communities. People have lost sources of livelihood, savings, and some were plunged more into debt. This has definitely impacted the mental health of communities.  

Mental health support in our communities is also affected by the high stigma around the subject; a number of people are still hesitant to seek help or even talk about mental health with their loved ones for fear of being judged and facing unnecessary backlash. 

To avert the problem, we need to have a basic understanding of how mental wellbeing affects physical health and relationships. Everyone needs to be aware of his or her mental wellbeing and be able to interpret mental health indicators such as persistent feelings of extreme sadness, loneliness, lack of sleep, worthlessness, hopeless, resignation from life, loss of interest in things one used to like, fatigue and loss of focus on key life priorities, and preoccupation with fear of being unwell or thoughts of impending doom. 

Most importantly, each of us needs to support ourselves and others whose mental health is being affected negatively. This is needed for individuals and communities to avert the mental health epidemic 

Elijah Kisembo , [email protected]