International Perspective

[nickh]

Not strictly on topic but it is always a good thing to have a wider view. The charity Basic Needs of which I have just learnt works for the improvement of mental health provision in countries where the situation is far worse than the UK. Their web-site is at...

http://www.basicneeds.org/index.asp

While I certainly DON'T subscribe to the view that it is in anyway helpful for us to dwell on the fact that there is always someone worse off than us as a treatment for individual conditions (on the contrary I think it is usually harmful as it just induces guilt which is one of the worst things anyone can do) in the context of SUI it is probably worth bearing in mind .

Nick.

 

[Apotheosis]

The Mentally ill in third World countries face the same issues as the general populations of those countries - usually poverty related. I personally disagree that medicating them is the answer. My understanding is that recovery rates in the Third World from severe mental illnesses are far higher than in the West. I put this down, primarily, to the vast majority of them not being medicated, & many only temporarily, & finding, in many cases, recovery through social integration & natural psychological healing. I know this perspective is controversial & I don't doubt that in certain places conditions are extreme. But like I say - the problems I think are more general to the majority of the populations of these places. I have strong views that charity is not the answer - when the West has directly created these problems & continues to do so, especially big business & governments. To put this into perspective - the entire amount raised by the first Live Aid project; was less than one days worth of international repayments made by all of Africa. These problems I believe cannot be solved by charity.

 

[Dollit]

I don't know how the person concerned got my details or how she knew so much about my friend but I had an email from a woman in India last year begging for help from her bipolar mother. I hasten to add she didn't want money she wanted help in finding a doctor. In the city she lived there was no provision for mental health care for women and next to none for men. I checked out everything she said and she was right. Somehow she'd learned that I had a friend who had worked in healthcare in the Indian subcontinent once and needed help sourcing treatment for her mother. The recovery rates in her city were non existent because there was no adequate treatment. Official figures don't always tell the whole story. I looked around for months and eventually found her a charity where she could go and get help (including medication) from her mother.

A lot of cultures discount mental health problems and concentrate solely on the physical symptoms. If you don't acknowledge a problem then officially it doesn't exist.