Problems of seeing mental illness as a curse
Three mass killings in less than a fortnight may not set the alarm bells ringing in a country as big and populous as China. But they point to the mental stress most people in this country are going through. To be more precise, it points to a deeper malaise: Diagnoses and treatment of people suffering from mental disorders.
What is unnerving is that two of the perpetrators butchered immediate members of their families. The first tragedy occurred in Luquan Yi and Miao autonomous county of Yunnan province on Nov 16, in which a 21-year-old youth killed his parents, grandmother, uncle, uncle's wife and his cousin. A week later, a 29-year-old restaurant owner in Beijing's Daxing district killed his parents, wife, sister and two children. And just three days after that, the resident of a village in Hohhot, the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, stabbed six of his fellow villagers. He later killed himself, too.
A clear pattern is evident in the killings: The Yunnan and Inner Mongolia residents were diagnosed with mental disorders and the Beijing restaurant owner was suspected to be suffering from some form of mental illness.
A mental disorder, especially schizophrenia, is the abnormal perception or expression of reality, and is commonly manifested through auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech, thinking or action. Though no laboratory test exists for schizophrenia, it (and other forms of mental disorders) can be diagnosed on the basis of a patient's self-reported experiences or observed behavior.
This takes us back to the killers. All three of them were suffering from some form of mental disorder, and psychiatrists had diagnosed the problems with two of them. Unfortunately, both of the diagnosed patients (in Yunnan and Inner Mongolia) were too poor to bear the cost of treatment, and hence their families had no choice but to let them live with the disorder. The consequences were fatal in both cases.
The Beijing restaurateur reportedly told policemen later that he killed his parents because they treated him "harshly" and his wife because he couldn't "control" her. And the Hohhot resident stabbed his fellow villagers apparently out of paranoia.
Psychologists and psychiatrists have said many patients with mental disorders don't cooperate in their treatment - for instance, they refuse to take medicine - and close ties force their family members to be too soft on them. What family members don't understand is that such patients may have hallucinations and could mistake even their close relatives and friends to be their enemies.
The killings also point to the dearth of treatment facilities, especially in rural areas, for patients with mental illness. We could solve the problem by establishing a medical system, which would ensure proper treatment for every mentally ill patient.
But perhaps our beliefs and practices play an equally big role in denying treatment to such patients. Traditionally, people in the East, especially in China and India, have seen mental illness as a curse, and treat mentally ill patients like outcastes. It's become a joke to refer to a person (even) visiting a particular hospital (or a city, in case of India) as "mad".
So strong is the social stigma attached to even the most harmless of mental disorders that family members (and patients themselves) tend to hide such cases from their neighbors, friends and even close relatives.
The country has a fight on its hands on two fronts. It can, with consistent and efforts and big spending, build a medical infrastructure to tend to all mentally patients. But it's people as a whole that have to fight and win the other battle: of removing the stigma attached to mentally ill patients.
(China Daily 12/03/2009 page8)
