BASSETERRE, St. Kitts –PSYCHIATRIST Sharon Halliday said that mental illness can happen to anyone and at times persons are just a phone call away from it.
At a Press Conference held on July 4, the causes of mental illness and the reality that it can happen to anyone, was one of the areas discussed.
Dr Halliday revealed that one of the factors that contribute to mental illness was the way in which an individual will deal with certain issues.
“How would you cope in a situation if your house was on fire and burnt to the ground killing your mother and baby? Or your husband or partner dies in accident? If sufficient bad things happen, a person could develop mental illness,” she said.
She said that sometimes mental illness can happen to a person who is working under stress and pressure and that one bad thing can happen whether it is a death in their family or an illness that can set them off.
“Sometimes having to deal with regular life stresses can cause somebody to develop a mental disorder. So my message to the public would be it can happen to anyone at anytime, and so we all need to help the mentally ill as much as possible; we all need to be sympathetic,” Halliday said.
Halliday said that some persons are resilient to issues and are always optimistic when things go wrong.
“You can give them problem after problem, and they will always find the upside in that situation; they will be optimistic; they would work on their issues. Some people don’t possess those capabilities, and whenever they are facing a problem, their self-esteem issues intervene; they feel like they cannot cope, and so those persons are more prone to develop mental issues,” she said.
She said there seems to be some sort of stigma in St. Kitts against mentally ill persons.
In her experience it seems that people would be more comfortable with a family member being in prison or having some other ailment than in coping with them having a mental issue.
“People are quite comfortable going to the doctor if the doctor says it’s cancer they say, ‘Okay’ and asks how they can get rid of it.
“If it’s diabetes they ask how to get rid of it, if patients come to me and I say they have a mental disorder they say, ‘how can I get rid of you!’
The stigma in St. Kitts is so great that when we have been in prison and the prison warden calls parents and tell them their child is showing signs of mental disorder and needs to be referred to the psychiatrist in prison, they are ready to fight because their child has a psychiatric illness.
People seem to be more comfortable with their family being in prison than having mental illness.”
Halliday said that substance abuse, specifically alcohol and marijuana, was another issue affecting people and indirectly and directly causing mental illness.
Alcohol, she said, is sometimes the root of domestic and child abuse which at times cause mental abuse on the victim while simultaneously there are persons who are self-medicating with marijuana.
“We also have to be aware of marijuana. We are seeing an increase in young men on the psychiatric ward. Right now we have eight young men below the age of 25 on the psychiatric ward all abusing marijuana.
If you have the genetic disposition, weaknesses… marijuana can affect you and make you mentally ill,” she said.
Shockingly, a male as young as 8-years-old, the psychiatrist noted, has been to the psychiatric ward as a result of marijuana abuse.
