We start from the fact that emotional and mental illnesses are among the most frequent in the general population, a large number of people suffer from these health conditions, some even since childhood. In addition, they generate significant suffering, and noticeably affect functionality and quality of life. With this introduction, we would think that anyone who suffers from a mental or emotional health problem diligently seeks a mental health professional. But it's not like that.
While it is true that there are numerous obstacles to accessing professionals (such as geographical conditions, bureaucratic red tape from insurance companies, the lack of medical agendas, and the costs of services), one of the main barriers for people to attend professionals is the stigma in psychiatry. Many people, although they clearly need professional assistance, do not attend because of stigma.
In psychiatry, contrary to most areas of health, stigmas are at all levels. In other specialties, the stigmata are only at one level, especially from the disease. For example, if someone has AIDS, it is a huge stigma, but no one will look down on antiviral drugs or infectious disease professionals. On the other hand, in psychiatry, stigmas include mental illness, the patient, the psychiatrist, psychiatric medications, doctors' offices, clinics, and even the very word 'psychiatry', which evokes dark, evil and hidden issues in everyone who I heard.
Very few people are free to say that they go to a psychiatrist, for fear of being considered "crazy", "unbalanced" or "deranged". It really is something that they hide, almost nobody says in social gatherings that they were at the psychiatrist. When they go for consultation, many of them, referred by our colleagues, tell us "I don't know why they sent me here, I'm not crazy."
When our office shares a floor with other specialties, it is better not to put “psychiatry” under our name on the door, or patients enter looking everywhere to see that no one is watching them. And what to say about what they think of a psychiatric clinic; people walk through the front in fear, waiting at what moment a terrifying scream is heard, they feel that it is an area with a heavy and negative energy (and this is not strange if we see that in horror movies sadistic murderers are usually people who have escaped from a mental institution).
Neither does the psychiatrist escape stigmata. They see us as strange, crazy or entities that handle the unknown and the most evil of the human species. When a colleague from another specialty refers us to someone, they usually say
"I'm going to send you to a specialist in this", they rarely say the word
"psychiatrist"; this is like mentioning the devil himself. And psychiatric drugs, not to mention, have a reputation for making people drug addicts, generating dependency, frying the brain, being drugs for crazy people, damaging organs and making a person stupid. And none of this is true. Most psychiatric medicines are much more benign and less toxic than almost all medicines used in other specialties.
The worst stigma is social. Society in general considers psychiatric patients as dangerous, aggressive or even, unfortunately in the XXI century, in certain circles they consider them as possessed by demons or other evil entities.
All this makes it difficult for people to consult the psychiatrist in time to treat their mental and emotional problems. The reality is that psychiatry is one more area of medicine, it works on similar problems but that have an influence on behavior and emotions, and also generate suffering, like other diseases, but at other levels. The lack of understanding of mental illness means that there is still a lot of rejection.
And a final entry. Contrary to popular belief, most people who go to the psychiatrist are not crazy. Of course there are, that we can assure you. But most of them are common, sane, sensible people who suffer from emotional and mental symptoms such as depression, anxiety, obsessions, unresolved grief, among other things. And these people require our help, and it is not because they are crazy, but because they need support, someone to listen to them, guidance, consolation, and on many occasions, a well-structured psychotherapy so that they can get ahead and improve their functionality and quality of life..
If you want to go beyond stigmata, and work on any event that is disturbing you emotionally through individual face-to-face therapeutic consultations or via Skype, click here.
Guillermo Mendoza Velez
Medical Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist
www.SaludMentalyEmocional.com
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