‘Mental health a complex disease’

MENTAL health is a complex disease to diagnose and treat, as factors causing or influencing it are diverse and develop over several years increasing the difficulty of dealing with it in one go as society assumes it to be.

Mental health has been receiving some attention in Zimbabwe of late following increased cases of people who are seeking psychiatric help from various pressures that they are coming across in their day to day lives, marital woes being prominent.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) mental health is a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realise their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community.

“It is an integral component of health and well-being that underpins our individual and collective abilities to make decisions, build relationships and shape the world we live in. Mental health is a basic human right. And it is crucial to personal, community and socioeconomic development. Mental health is more than the absence of mental disorders. It exists on a complex continuum, which is experienced differently from one person to the next, with varying degrees of difficulty and distress and potentially very different social and clinical outcomes,” wrote WHO in their website.

Dr Wellington Ranga, a psychiatrist and clinical director at Ingutsheni Central Hospital said there was a need for society to get to a point where humanity uses a rational approach to some things, marriage included.

“We get into habits where we get programmed into paradigms and philosophies and so on. As a society we have to know that we do not always benefit from what we are told, be it on drug abuse or marital abuse advice. These are parts of human nature.

“Most of these depressions in marriages come from there that one does not want to accept a situation and even if you try and prescribe medication it does not work really. Others suggest counseling but people want to tell the counselor to tell their partners not to cheat, I have never seen where it works but people always assume it works,” he said.

Dr Ranga however, said dealing with mental health was not an easy task as it was a lengthy and complex disease to treat.

“Mental health is difficult to really work around, I have been working in there for more than 20 years. There are many things to look at, it is not static. There are issues that a person may experience that can precipitate, predispose or perpetuate mental health problems such that when we are bringing in an intervention we need to find all those things. That is the complexity of mental health such that interventions differ on personalities, the people you are living with and so on,” he said.

Ms Sue Chigorimbo a suicide attempt survivor revealed that she suffered from mental health problems caused by marital woes, an issue she said is usually ignored in the African culture. Her mental health at the time was suffering immensely when she contemplated suicide and eventually tried to take her own life, unsuccessfully.

She lived to tell the story of the reality of mental health being a cause for concern that needs to be given more attention before many lives are lost to suicide.

Miss Chigorimbo said society has a tendency to look at the material possessions that people possess during the subsistence of their marriages and unions and they assume all is well yet some will be in turmoil, on the verge of suicide.

“My relatives would tell me to hang in there as I was living my best life, even if I was telling them that I was deep in problems, they told me to hang in there. I then stopped talking about my problems and reaching out to people. I suffered in silence, and was losing control of everything,” she said.

The depression set in and she could not find anything that interested her, she wanted nobody near her and stayed at home without eating many a time. She found solace in prayer and trying to be a good wife in a bid to try and calm the storm that was brewing in her home.

“I tried, I cooked the best meals, looked my best every day, all I wanted was to save my marriage that was crumbling right before my eyes. I did not want to lose it but I was heading there until I just could not take it anymore, I stopped even taking care of myself, I would bath because I had no option but I was out of touch with everything.

“I had a baby then, in 2015 and that’s when the problems had also started and I did not know I was depressed, I didn’t not want to even breast feed my child, I switched to baby formula and would just push my baby away to whoever was there. I lost interest in life then,” she said.

Culturalist Pathisa Nyathi also gave his insights saying the institution of marriage has been isolated leading to many divorces and mental health disturbances.

“These marriages of today have been isolated, they have lost the social support, the wider family support. Marriage now is about you and your partner, full stop. You have detached the institution from its foundations which provided support and would detect early warnings of whatever was wrong. It was that broader family which rectified the situation before getting to breaking point. That is what has been lost, now you are alone,” he said.

He said long ago marital problems were discussed and solved with the broader family making the burden lighter unlike today.

“A problem shared is in a way a problem solved so if you are bottling it up one day there will be an explosion, and it comes in the form of disorientation of direction, mental health challenges to name a few. In problems you need to feel you have people who support you and provide psychosocial support and they are very important. But now the African institution of marriage has been whittled down to a level of husband and wife who do not have to consult anybody. We are now following other people’s traditions. They do not think the African arrangement regarding marriage matters,” he said.

Added Mr Nyathi;

“When it comes to crunch that is when you discover the loneliness that you no longer have the support or team of advisors and comforters, and in a situation like that what you immediately think about is the rope, you want to commit suicide. In the past there would have been people that would see that something was wrong before getting to boiling point and they would intervene and call other people who were related. Remember a wife was not one man’s wife, but she belonged to a family and they would lend support and that belonging had its implications,” he said.

For Miss Chigorimbo, after getting a second chance to live she has started focusing on her craft work that keeps her busy and she has recovered a great deal from the mental breakdown that she had suffered and accepted the situation, the fate of her failed marriage.

@NyembeziMu