Neglected aspect of health

Health can be defined in different ways, but all boil down to how World Health Organisation (WHO) defines it.

The United Nations health organisation defines it as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.

This means health is not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

In fact, the enjoyment of highest attainable standard of health is one of fundamental rights.

If a healthcare delivery system pays much of its attention to a physical aspect disregarding mental health, it is incomplete and unbalanced one.

A system of this nature cannot meet its goals.

But this is what is actually happening in Malawi’s health system where the physical well-being of a patient gets a lion’s share of attention, caring less about mental health.

An unbalanced healthcare system has inevitable devastating consequences.

Some of them are a change in health-seeking behaviour, poor drug adherence, poor relationship between health workers and patients and ineffective treatment.

This partly explains why we often hear health experts decrying that some patients abscond medical treatment in preference for prophets and traditional healers. Unfortunately, these patients only risk their health and get swindled of their money in the process.

It is a paradox that the physical aspect of a patient is the dominant concern of the health worker—for all physically sick people are psychologically sick, but not all the psychologically sick are physically sick.

Falling sick is not merely a biological or physical state, but it has implication on the way people feel about themselves and also their ability to participate in social interactions.

The mind is affected at an early stage of any disease. Every person visiting  a health facility  to seek medical assistance, whether a guardian cheering the sick or a client feigning illness—,  is psychologically sick and  must be handled by a health worker who is mindful of this fact if service delivered has to be satisfactory .

Mental health is not just the absence of mental illness. It is a spectrum of cognitive, emotional and behaviour conditions that interfere with social and emotional well-being, the lives and productivity of people.

Psychiatry and mental health are typically used interchangeably, but they do not mean the same thing.

Psychiatry is only concerned with mental disorder. Health workers are at least taught psychiatric health, but not enough mental health care.

Computer experts say ‘garbage in garbage out” to warn users that if you put wrong information in the computer, the result will certainly be bad. Even what adults in this country do is a result of what they got as children.

The neglect of mental aspects of health emanates from colleges that train health personnel. No standalone  mental health course is taught, save for the basics of psychiatry and psychology.

As psychiatry and psychology are treated with contempt by colleges, students do not take these subjects seriously.

They often attend these classes just to fulfil  the requirements.

Clinical attachments to mental hospitals are more less a holiday time for many students. Their inquisitiveness to learn new things shuts down until they are relocated to another department.

It is not surprising that the students who work lazily at Zomba Mental Hospital will work hard at Zomba Central Hospital and Gogo Chatinkha or Ethel Mutharika maternity wings.Their lecturers  did the same during their time. A vicious cycle takes root.

Given the training system the country’s health personnel go through, a state of complete mental well-being cannot be attained.

Health workers   should change their approach to patients bearing in mind that when the body is sick, so is the mind.

No matter how good government policies that guide healthcare service provision may be, paying a blind eye to mental health undercuts the whole purpose of having a healthy nation which is a prerequisite for development. n