Around 154 million people suffer from depression in different parts of the world and 25 million of them are in the grip of schizophrenia and impairment in the perception of reality.
Eminent consultant psychiatrist Dr Abdul Hameed Memon said this while addressing a seminar on mental health at S J Institute on Monday. He said the mental illnesses were common to countries of all sorts and people with these disorders were often subjected to social isolation, poor quality of life and increased death rates involving suicides.
He said there were many factors contributing to high rates of mental health problems in Pakistan. The inter-family marriages, high rates of birth injuries, economic decline, growing unemployment and rapidly changing cultural and social values are some of the causes, he added.
Dr Memon said untreated disorders bring about unhealthy behaviour and non-diminished immune functioning. He said Pakistan was a country of 160 million people and a large segment of its population suffers from mental illnesses.
Memon said due to lack of awareness, people with psychological and emotional problems often visit faith healers, spiritual leaders, homeopathic doctors, magicians and hakims. There was limited number of mental health professionals in the country, he said.
Dr Memon underlined the need for improving psychiatric education at undergraduate and postgraduate level, adding the foreign experts participating in educational research workshop recommended that one third of final year MBBS should be utilised for studying psychiatry.
The doctor suggested that steps should be taken to remove the stigma attached to mental health problems and their treatment. He said medical research had discovered new drugs and therapies to treat mental disorders, but mental illness was the most misunderstood amongst illnesses and that capitalism was responsible for the increase in mental abnormities.
He said social and economic pressures were making people mentally sick and the only way to save oneself from the illness was to lead a moderate life.
