Mental Health: Reasons to Survive Pandemic's Effects to Minds

Here's some excellent sharing of experiences on Mental Health which I happened to listened at TED. I felt it will be more meaningful if shared widely to inspire others in time of pandemic. I curated part of the thoughts which I held significant but you can listen all of the stories from these resources at TED through the links provided for expanded experiential contexts. I hope you will find meaning from these resource speakers to survive the pandemic's effect to human minds and emotions either as mental health service providers or as a survivor of this global situation. 

 

  Hailey Hardcastle at TED on "toolkit to survive mental health crisis."

-- "...physical and mental health are equal and should be treated as such. In fact, they're connected. Take health care for example. But how about mental health care? I know I was trained in CPR in my seventh-grade health class. What if I was trained in seventh grade how to manage my mental health or how to respond to a mental health crisis? I'd love to see a world where each of us has a toolkit of skills to help a friend, coworker, family member or even stranger going through a mental health crisis. And these resources should be especially available in schools because that's where students are struggling the most. The other concept that I sincerely hope you take is its always okay to take a break. It doesn't have to be a whole day; sometimes that's not realistic. But it can be a few moments here and there to check in with yourself. Think of life like a race ... like a long-distance race. If you sprint in the very beginning you're going to get burnt out. You may even hurt yourself from pushing too hard. But if you pace yourself, if you take it slow, sometimes intentionally, and you push yourself other times, you are sure to be way more successful."

   

Sangu Delle at TED on "there is no shame on taking care of our mental health."

-- World Health Organization pointed that mental health is about being able to cope with the normal stressors of life; to work productively and fruitfully; and to be able to make a contribution to your community. Mental health includes our emotional, psychological and social well-being. Globally, 75 percent of all mental illness cases can be found in low-income countries. Yet most African governments invest less than one percent of their health care budget in mental health. Even worse, we have a severe shortage of psychiatrists in Africa. Nigeria, for example, is estimated to have 200 -- in a country of almost 200 million. In all of Africa, 90 percent of our people lack access to treatment. As a result, we suffer in solitude, silenced by stigma. 12 percent, witchcraft and spiritual possession. But few cited other known causes of mental illness, like genetics, socioeconomic status, war, conflict or the loss of a loved one. The stigmatization against mental illness often results in the ostracizing and demonizing of sufferers. Photojournalist Robin Hammond has documented some of these abuses ... in Uganda, in Somalia, and here in Nigeria. Even with this knowledge and with their stories in tow, I, in turn, struggled, and could not speak to anyone when I faced my own anxiety, so deep is our fear of being the madman. All of us -- but we Africans especially -- need to realize that our mental struggles do not detract from our virility, nor does our trauma taint our strength. We need to see mental health as important as physical health. We need to stop suffering in silence. We must stop stigmatizing disease and traumatizing the afflicted. Talk to your friends. Talk to your loved ones. Talk to health professionals. Being honest about how we feel does not make us weak; it makes us human. It is time to end the stigma associated with mental illness. So the next time your hear "mental," do not just think of the madman. Think of me.

 

Vikram Patel at TEDGlobal2012 on the need to democratize mental health and basic psychiatric services for ordinary people. -- "We discover some startling things about mental illness from a global perspective. We discover that, for example, mental illnesses are amongst the leading causes of disability around the world. Depression, for example, is the third-leading cause of disability, alongside conditions such as diarrhea and pneumonia in children. When you put all the mental illnesses together, they account for roughly 15 percent of the total global burden of disease. Indeed, mental illnesses are also very damaging to people's lives, but beyond just the burden of disease, let us consider the absolute numbers. The World Health Organization estimates that there are nearly four to five hundred million people living on our tiny planet who are affected by a mental illness. Now some of you here look a bit astonished by that number, but consider for a moment the incredible diversity of mental illnesses, from autism and intellectual disability in childhood, through to depression and anxiety, substance misuse and psychosis in adulthood, all the way through to dementia in old age, and I'm pretty sure that each and every one us present here today can think of at least one person, at least one person, who's affected by mental illness in our most intimate social networks. I see some nodding heads there. Worrying is the vast majority of these affected individuals do not receive the care that we

 know can transform their lives, and remember, we do have robust evidence that a range of

know that can transform their lives, and remember, we do have a robust evidence that a range of interventions, medicines, psychological interventions, and social interventions, can make a vast difference. And yet, even in the best-resourced countries, for example here in Europe, roughly 50 percent of affected people don't receive these interventions. In the sorts of countries I work in, that so-called treatment gap approaches an astonishing 90 percent. It isn't surprising, then, that if you should speak to anyone affected by a mental illness, the chances are that you will hear stories of hidden suffering, shame and discrimination in nearly every sector of their lives. But perhaps most heartbreaking of all are the stories of the abuse of even the most basic human rights, such as the young woman shown in this image here that are played out every day, sadly, even in the very institutions that were built to care for people with mental illnesses, the mental hospitals. It seems to me that there are five key lessons that I've shown on this slide that are critically important for effective task shifting. The first is that we need to simplify the message that we're using, stripping away all the jargon that medicine has invented around itself. We need to unpack complex health care interventions into smaller components that can be more easily transferred to less-trained individuals. We need to deliver health care, not in large institutions, but close to people's homes, and we need to deliver health care using whoever is available and affordable in our local communities. And importantly, we need to reallocate the few specialists who are available to perform roles such as capacity-building and supervision. health care in the developed world, the health care costs in the [developed] world, are rapidly spiraling out of control, and a huge chunk of those costs are human resource costs. But equally important is because health care has become so incredibly professionalized that it's become very remote

 and removed from local communities. For me, what's truly sundar about the idea of task shifting, though, isn't that it simply makes health care more accessible and  affordable but that it is also fundamentally empowering. It empowers ordinary people to be more effective in caring for the health of others in their community, and in doing so, to become better guardians of their own health. Indeed, for me, task shifting is the ultimate example of the democratization of medical knowledge, and therefore, medical power." 

 

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Jeremey Forbes at TED on Listening to prevent mental health stigmatization. -- "We need to be able to listen. I don't know who out there is a good listener. I'm working on my listening abilities, but it's an art form to listen and not judge. Don't make fun. If someone's coming to talk to you about mental illness and anxiety and depression and thoughts of suicide, we need to respect that. They want to trust us that we're going to hold that in tight and not tell everyone. We need to do that. So we need to have conversations. We need to listen. And we need to start reducing the stigma associated with mental health. Companies are now starting to have mental health days. What a great idea. It's not just physical sick days, it's mental health days. Things are changing. We can add to that change. I'm a life preserver. I think we can all be life preservers. The pain of regret is far greater than the pain of hard work."

Nikki Webber Allen at TEDResidency on Don't suffer from your depression in silence. -- "...most mental disorders develop, at least in part, because of a chemical imbalance in the brain, and/or an underlying genetic predisposition. So you can't just shake it off. For black Americans, stressors like racism and socioeconomic disparities put them at a 20 percent greater risk of developing a mental disorder, yet they seek mental health services at about half the rate of white Americans. One reason is the stigma, with 63 percent of black Americans mistaking depression for a weakness. Sadly, the suicide rate among black children has doubled in the past 20 years. I share my story openly, and I ask others to share theirs, too. I believe that's what it takes to help people who may be suffering in silence to know that they are not alone and to know that with help, they can heal. Now, I still have my struggles, particularly with the anxiety, but I'm able to manage it through daily mediation, yoga and a relatively healthy diet. Life is beautiful. Sometimes it's messy, and it's always unpredictable. But it will all be OK when you have your support system to help you through it. I hope that if your burden gets too heavy, you'll ask for a hand, too."

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