Introduction
Starting today, Stabroek News will publish a biweekly column by Sherlina Nageer on various wellness-related issues, including sexual, reproductive, women, and children’s health, nutrition, primary health care, alternative and traditional medicine, chronic diseases, as well as issues around training, monitoring and evaluation, health policy and education among other areas.
My grandmother Gulshan was sent to the ‘Berbice mad house’ not long after she gave birth to my father. For years, no one in my family mentioned her – she was, after all, ‘a mad woman’, and therefore persona non grata. Never mind that there is a valid medical condition called post-partum depression, which has been known to affect mothers in all societies around the world for centuries, and which has been recognised as a real illness by medical professionals for decades.
Unfortunately, many people in Guyana are still not properly informed about mental health and there is still a great deal of stigma and discrimination against persons suffering from mental illness. The common perception of ‘mad people’ that many Guyanese have is of deranged individuals, homeless, wandering the streets in various states of undress, mumbling to themselves, and sometimes threatening passersby. While this is indeed true for a portion of the mentally ill, the fact is that such persons are not representative of the majority of those suffering from mental illness. In fact, most people who