PESHAWAR: Change in attitude must to stop mental illness: expert
By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Feb 22: Patients in the United Kingdom play a great role in their treatment and consultants treating them take their suggestions seriously as far as their diagnosis and treatment was concerned.
This was stated by Prof Dr Mike Shooter, President of Psychiatric Society, Royal College of London, UK, at the second day of a three-day International Psychiatry Conference on Saturday.
The conference has been organized by the Pakistan Psychiatric Society (PPS) at a local hotel.
“The patients in the UK have formed strong organizations, working collectively with similar bodies of health professionals to redress problems haunting doctors as well as patients,” said Mr Shooter.
Delivering a lecture entitled “New vision in Psychiatric Practice,” the psychiatrist said that discriminatory practices were more common in developing countries than in the developed ones. He said that it was difficult to check the number of patients suffering from depression, shock and trauma unless the discriminatory attitudes were changed.
About monopoly of pharmaceutical companies, Dr Shooter said: “these days there are more drugs manufactured by different pharmaceutical companies, and a few diagnosis. He further touched the service standard prevailing in the Third World countries and said that there should be a balance of service between hospitals and community-based Psychiatry Centre as adopted in the UK. He continued that in the UK, doctors were openly asked to conduct evidence-based practice.
Dr Arshad Hussain talking on the topic “Promoting Mental Health in the War Zone” said that according to Unicef data, there were 51 armed conflicts around the world and children along with women were the worst sufferers. He said during the last few years two million children had been killed, two to four million had become disabled and one million had been separated from their families.
He also gave an account of his visits to Bosnia where he said his team had found that 75 per cent children interviewed were suffering from post-traumatic stress depression (PTSD).
He said most of the Bosnian children were afraid of sighting light, in the belief that they could see their Serb neighbours in light who would open fire on them.
Dr Husain said that in the Bosnian war children had been the main target with focus of ethnic cleansing, adding that most of the children had been sexually abused, killed and kidnapped to convert them to Christianity.
The net result was that years of war in Bosnia made most of the children pessimist about their future and took no interest in social affairs.
