Monday, February 06, 2012

Inform to erase mental illness stigma

Mental Health Promotion Advisory Council member Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye yesterday called on non-governmental organisations, charitable foundations and the government to focus on educating the civilization on mental illness, to erase the stigma linked to such disorders. He said tragic incidents involving people with Mental problems, such as the one where a woman supposedly…..

smothered her 10-year-old relative to death, highlighted the urgency of addressing the issue among Malaysians. “Malaysians need more awareness about mental health so they can learn to respond with sympathy and not act with prejudice,” he said in a statement yesterday. Lee observed that some psychiatric patients do pose a risk of violence but to put it in perspective, most aggressive people were not mentally ill, and most mentally ill people were not violent….

“If mentally ill patients are properly treated, they pose a low risk of aggression. Violence is the price we pay for not providing treatment for these patients,” he said. Lee reckoned that when properly treated, people with serious mental illness were at no higher risk of violent behaviour than the general population. He emphasised that adherence to medication was of utmost importance as evasion on treatment may increase the risk of violence. “There is therefore a need for family members to know the importance of medication devotion, which is life-long for certain serious psychotic conditions….