Mental patients still stigmatised

Mental patients in Namibia are still stigmatised by the community.

The absence of proper information on mental health has rendered mental health patients as outcasts who are often neglected by society.

Such patients also face discrimination and stigma from their own families – some of whom would even go to the extent of chaining them to a tree.

According to Magdalena Didalelwa, the acting secretary of the Namibian Mental Health Association and a nurse at the Mental Hospital, some family members do not understand mental patients. “They keep them at home where they don’t sometimes receive the necessary care.”

Didalelwa was speaking at a meeting of the Namibian Mental Association where its interim committee was to be announced.

“Because the stigma towards mentally challenge people is high, some family members lock and chain them up simply because they don’t want people to know they have a mentally challenged person at home or they can not handle them anymore. When some of these patients come to the hospital they have chain marks on their hands and feet, which is not good,” the nurse said.

Also speaking at the same event, Zanti du Plessis, a qualified lawyer who lost everything due to major depression in 2004, urged the association to build more safe houses for mentally challenged people.

“We need to be around friendly people who understand what we are going through. The mistake our families make is they pamper our illness. When you suffer from depression, for instance, they will tell you to sleep or rest more and then you end up sleeping the whole day.

“Family and friends should accept and understand us; they should not underestimate us. We are not stupid, just mentally challenged,” she says.

The association was registered in 2005 but Cecilia Ndafenango, the acting chairperson, says it was not easy.

“When we first started out it was really difficult. People would not turn up for meetings and there were no funds. Today, however, we are well established.”
Albertina Barandonga, a representative in the Mental Health department of the Ministry of Health and Social Services, explained what mental health is.

“Characteristics of people who are mentally healthy include that they are not overwhelmed by fear, emotions, anger, love, quilt or worries. They neither underestimate nor overestimate their abilities,” she says.