Listen to voices in their heads

If you can take anything from the Life Esidimeni tragedy, it is that psychological difficulties are real. There are people who face demons lodged in their heads, the voices that speak to only them. Their actions are far beyond our comprehension because we do not face the mountains they climb every day, just to survive.

The tragedy of Life Esidimeni reminded us of this.

Black society worries me when it comes to mental illness. If one suffers from depression, bipolar disorder or even schizophrenia, it cannot possibly be a mental condition: it’s demons, drugs, ir the ancestors are unhappy. But it can never be a mental illness … Many people go untreated because as a society we have decided to shelve the issue.

I know someone who suffers from mental illness, who refuses to admit they may require help. When we approach the affected person, he claims it to be the devil and ancestral issues. One day he may put his and the lives of others at risk while he wants to slaughter a goat or a chicken, when he could simply pop a pill or two.

The truth is that sometimes as a society we refuse to believe that the mental health of some people is not at the level we would like it to be. We say things like “have you lost your mind?”, “is that your other voice speaking?”. It’s all good and funny when it has not knocked on our door, but it is a sad reality for those who have to deal with mental instability.

I am not putting down the importance of ancestry or those who believe in it, the existence of demons and “the forces of evil”. The issue for me is that when someone’s life is hanging in the balance we need to recognise the struggle for what it really is.

Let us learn from the lessons of Life Esidimeni: people with mental illnesses do not lose their status as human beings, their lives still matter.

If the government had remembered that, those people would still be alive and on the road, perhaps, to recovery.

Life Esidimeni should never happen again. We need to protect those who are not in position to care for themselves. The cracks of our society are too full with vulnerable people that we neglect because of standards we have created, at the expense of others.