On October 10 every year, Malawi joins the rest of the civilised world to commemorate World Mental Health Day.
Over the years, consideration has been made regarding mental health as a human right. Thoughtful and deep, as the condition comes with it all kinds of stigma and discrimination.
As I write, Malawi is gripped with so many mental issues in our midst.
Drug and alcohol abuse is rocking the show; marriages are breaking up like nobody’s business. Months ago, students at Robert Blake Secondary School razed down the school for the simple reason that the new head teacher was instilling discipline by dealing with a boy found smoking hemp and also for telling the students that they would have less days of entertainment!
On social media, there were stories about a man who strangled his grandfather to death; a man and his wife who killed their baby for reasons best known to themselves and in Zomba a man who cut his wife’s head off.
A day is not passing without hearing stories of defilement of girls as young as three-years-old and at the time I wrote the original of this entry, four trainee police officers had been arrested for fake Malawi Schools Certificate of Education! By Friday, May 22, they would have been graduating from the Police Training School in Kanjedza.
Are these macabre deeds becoming more pronounced because of the way information is flowing these days with social media, or is it because many are walking with mental illnesses?
The times are hard, just as a recent study shows that poverty in rural areas has drastically grown with more and more people dependent on maganyu.
The economy is tanking. The kwacha is buying less and it appears those in leadership feel they are the best thing ever to happen to this country.
The depression and stress is way too much taking all of us to the edges of delirium, schizophrenia and other extreme mental health defects.
It is self-evident that experts in the field are too few. Provision of wellness services is way too high for the Malawian on the street to afford.
At times, what happens in the country borders on mental defects in high places as well.
Who will appease the spirits that have cast on us this spell of mental somersaults? What libations do we have to offer that the gods may intermit us this evil? Only time will tell.
