Manama: Negative attitudes to mental illness remain entrenched in Qatar's population, with only one third of people accepting that mentally ill patients are capable of working in regular jobs, a top psychiatrist has warned.
"Such attitudes raise concerns about the integration of patients with mental illness into the community,"Dr Suhaila Ghuloum, head of the psychiatry department at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), said. "They also highlight the need for more awareness about mental illness in the country."
She was speaking at a seminar at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q) to discuss the prevalence of mental disorders in Qatar and the lack of understanding surrounding these types of diseases.
The event was part of a series of activities launched by health care organisations in a week-long awareness campaign in recognition of World Mental Health Day.
About one third of adult patients at primary healthcare centres in Qatar have some form of mental illness, and outpatient visits to Hamad Hospital’s psychiatry unit have increased considerably in recent years, the seminar was told.
According to Dr Hassan Al Amin, associate professor of psychiatry at WCMC-Q and consultant psychiatrist at HMC, culture is a key issue in understanding mental health and illness.
"People from different cultures have different ways of expressing themselves,"he said. "For example, there is no word for depression in Arabic dialects or in the street language. Instead, people say their head is hurting. Without understanding how people express themselves in their culture, the language may obscure diagnosis and complicate treatment," he was quoted by Qatari daily Gulf Times as saying.
In her discussion of the effect of marital conflicts on children, Family Counsellor Hadia Baker Abulaban said "warm responsive care supports brain development in children, particularly the pathways determining emotion and social responsiveness in adulthood".
However, stressful or traumatic experiences undermine development and lower the threshold for activation of the stress response in later life, she said.
"It’s important to remember that it is not a problem to have a problem. Conflict handled well can be productive, leading to deeper understanding, mutual respect and closeness," she added.
Joan Lanning, director of the Employee Assistance Programme at WCMC-Q, highlighted the concept of shame as both a positive force for controlling behaviour and a negative force for manipulating rules.
"There is a difference between guilt and shame,"she said. "Guilt is an emotion that results from behaving in a manner contrary to our beliefs and values, while shame is a response to a personal failure relative to others’ expectations. Guilt encourages us to live within personal, family and cultural rules, while shame encourages us to manipulate those rules to make us feel good about ourselves."
In a discussion about sex, drugs, and lies as mental disorders, Dr Nadir Elzain Omara, consultant psychiatrist at Al Ahli Hospital in Doha, said that "because psychosexual disorders, substance abuse, eating and personality disorders share some common origins, the principles of their management are almost identical".
"But more importantly, they are viewed as a perversion of normal behaviour, which can lead to prejudicial attitudes against individuals with any of these disorders,"Dr O’Mara said. "Disapproving attitudes obscure our understanding of these disorders and may discourage people from seeking help,"she added.
Dr Mamoun Mobayed, consultant psychiatrist and director for the Study and Research Department at the Social Rehabilitation Centre in Doha, emphasised that treatments for mental illness have improved greatly in recent years.
"Progress in treatment is guided by our growing body of constantly revolving knowledge," he said.
