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【bio-news】精神疾病与自杀风险
Mental Illness And The Risk Of Suicide
(10/10/2006)
Today, October 10 is World Mental Health Day. The day provides the opportunity for assessing the state of mental health care in various parts of the world.
The theme for this year’s celebration is: “The risk of suicide and mental health.”
Globally, suicide represents 1.4 per cent of the global burden of disease – higher than deaths resulting from road traffic accidents per year.
Generally, mental and behavioural disorders are common during childhood and adolescence.
Twenty-five per cent of individuals develop one or more mental or behavioural disorders at some stage in life, in both developed and developing countries. These are caused by either genetic or biological factors.
The causes of mental disorders include depression, schizophrenia, epilepsy and substance abuse – the use of psychoactive substances such as alcohol, opioids, cannabinoids (marijuana, sedatives and hypnotics, or cocaine) and such other stimulants as hallucinogens, tobacco and volatile solvents.
The conditions include acute intoxication, harmful use, dependence and psychotic disorders. These tend to have links with the tendency to commit suicide.
According to the World Health Organisation, depression is a common mental disorder characterised by sadness, loss of interest in activities and decreased energy.
It is the longevity and symptoms of the experience that differentiates depression from normal mood changes.
Suicide remains one of the common and often unavoidable outcomes of depression. Depressive disorders and schizophrenia are responsible for 60 per cent of all suicides.
Alzheimer’s disease is a degenerative brain syndrome characterised by a progressive decline in memory, thinking, comprehension, calculation, language, learning capacity and judgement.
It is, however, important to differentiate the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease from normal age-related decline in cognitive functions which is more gradual and leads to much milder disability. There is currently no cure for Alzheimer's disease.
Mental health experts group the global burden of the disease into two: There is the undefined burden which refers to the economic and social burden for families, communities and countries.
In this case, mental illnesses affect the functioning and thinking processes of the individual, greatly diminishing his or her social role and productivity in the community.
In addition, because mental illnesses are disabling and last for many years, they take a tremendous toll on the emotional and socio-economic capabilities of relatives who care for the patient, especially when the health system is unable to offer treatment and support at an early stage.
The dynamics of loss in this case include lost production from premature deaths sometimes caused by suicide (generally equivalent to, and in some countries greater, than deaths from road traffic accidents); lost production from people with mental illness who are unable to work, in the short medium or long-term; lost productivity from family members caring for the mentally-ill person, and reduced productivity from sick people while at work, among other things.
The hidden burden refers to the burden associated with stigma and violations of human rights and freedoms. Again, this burden is difficult to quantify.
This is a major problem throughout the world, as many cases remain concealed and unreported. The WHO defines stigma as a mark of shame, disgrace or disapproval which results in an individual being shunned or rejected by others.
The stigma associated with all forms of mental illness is strong, but generally increases the more an individual’s behaviour differs from that of the 'norm'.
Because of stigma, persons suffering from a mental illness are often rejected by friends, relatives, neighbours and employers, leading to aggravated feelings of rejection, loneliness and depression.
It is the persistence of isolation that tempts some mental health patients to take their lives by committing suicide.
In Ghana, for instance, if a friend saw you near the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, the next time he/she meets you he/she would try to find out what you were doing there.
The interest here will be to find out if there is something psychologically wrong with you which will then define his/her attitude towards you from then.
As Dr Osei put it, mental illness weakens the quality of life of its victims. He explained that minor internal mental disorders do not often interfere with the relationship between the patient and the rest of the community.
According to him, "the effect is within. The public does not see or feel the impact. Only the patient does."
However, there is a potential for such a person to isolate him/herself from social activities which could escalate the severity of the disease.
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作者:admin@医学,生命科学 2011-03-01 17:14
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