2023-04-26 21:53:37
The Brazilian Association of Psychiatry (ABP) has promoted several initiatives in recent years in favor of the mental health of the Brazilian population. Throughout the month of April, actions against Psychophobia are intensified, with the aim of making society aware of the damage caused by the prejudice that exists against people who have mental disorders and deficiencies.
According to the World Health Organization-WHO, approximately 1 billion people live with psychiatric disorders worldwide. In Brazil, the reality is also worrying: it is estimated that 70 million people suffer from mental illnesses and that they are not always diagnosed or treated correctly.
Prejudice against those who suffer from a mental illness can come in different forms: 1) speeches like “mental illness is not a disease”, it’s “indulgence, screw imbalance or freshness”; 2) associations of mental illness with violence, although 95% of violent individuals do not have a mental illness; 3) discriminatory speech that the mentally ill person is incapable and needs to be isolated; 4) lower opportunities and wages in jobs and even in academia; 5) prejudgments of the type “everything that the mentally ill person feels is in his head” and that is why doctors do not always investigate organic problems with the same detail and attention as other patients, placing the health and life of the mentally ill in undiagnosed physical illnesses or treated.
It is very difficult to live in a society that constantly establishes standards of normality and social and cultural inclusion. There are no perfect or ideal models, we all have our weaknesses, some exposed, others not. The truth is that there is social cruelty against those who are different, with unacceptable and disgusting stereotypes.
The Vigitel Survey, published in 2022 by the Ministry of Health, included depression in the list of chronic diseases found for the first time and revealed that about 23 million citizens have a depressive disorder, surpassing diabetes mellitus itself – a very common chronic disease. In addition, WHO points out that our country ranks third on the list of countries with the highest number of psychiatric disorders in the world and leads the ranking of cases of anxiety in Latin America, with almost 19 million sufferers across the country.
Because of this expressive mark of mentally ill people in Brazil, we need to fight the stigma that makes it too difficult to seek early treatment for depression, anxiety and other mental disorders. As with any disease, early detection can prevent tragic consequences such as suicide, among others.
People with mental illnesses often suffer in silence because family and society discriminate against them all the time. Psychophobia (prejudice against those suffering from mental illness) prevents people from seeking the right help and often the assistance in the SUS is precarious, with little infrastructure and a shortage of trained professionals. The mental health budget in Brazil is still very low and that is why we do not have equal conditions between private institutions and those of the SUS. All levels of assistance need to be considered, from therapeutic communities, CAPS (Center for Psychosocial Care) to excellent psychiatric hospitals that cannot simply be irresponsibly closed, preventing severe cases from receiving highly specialized and humanized care when necessary. In the private sector, unlike the SUS, investment has been huge on the part of large business groups, including in psychiatric hospitals of excellence where such investors have detected a gap and a profit niche.
Therefore, we need to roll up our sleeves and fight incessantly against the prejudice that the mentally ill have been silently suffering for decades in our country. Effective, science-based government action is expected, not just speeches.
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