Mind matters

Dr William Menninger, one of the founding fathers of Contemplative Meditation, perhaps doesn’t intend sarcasm when he says, “Mental health problems do not affect three or four out of every five persons but one out of one.” No person, in the course of h/her life, isn’t troubled with some sort of mental distress. And without proper tools to handle this distress, it might soon morph into a chronic illness, which is apparently happening in Nepal with troubling frequency. At any given time, around 10 percent of Nepalis are suffering from mental illness, of which 1-3 percent have chronic disorders.



That’s the government figure. According to World Health Organization, the situation is worse: as much as 25 percent of Nepalis might be suffering. Given this sobering reality, one would assume the government would wake up to the scale of the problem and divert its attention and resources to addressing it. Sadly, that is not the case. Annually, the state sets aside around three percent of its national budget for health. Astonishingly, of the three percent, a pitiable 0.08 percent is allocated for mental health.



In order to improve this dismal situation, a new mental health act, reportedly, is on the anvil. The act, which the Health Ministry is working on, will avail legal protection for those with mental disorders. It also hopes to minimize the stigma attached to mental illness and help those recovering from mental conditions rehabilitate into the society, in addition to guaranteeing life-long social security for the incurably ill.



But it is hard to see how the act, no matter how good its provisions, could work in a country that has just one mental hospital, 50 psychiatric clinics and around a dozen counseling centers—for a population of nearly 30 million! Thankfully, many non-governmental organizations have taken up the slack, not only by helping the ill get proper medication and counseling, but also pushing the state to do more to take better care of those with mental health problems.



There have been some creative endeavors too. For instance, every year on World Mental Health Day (October 10), the Nepal Mental Health Foundation, an NGO, gives away a journalism award to the journalist who best covers mental health throughout the year, an initiative which could encourage more journalists to take up this vital issue.



Besides informing the wider population of the importance of living mentally healthy lives, perhaps the biggest challenge before those working in the field in Nepal is, again, to remove the great stigma still attached to mental disorders. Only when the message filters through to the wider population that it is completely okay to have mental illness (that they are no different to other diseases in that most of them are curable) can this growing epidemic be stopped in its tracks.

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