The first time I went to the therapist’s office was the day I knew that there was something very wrong with the mental health system in Egypt.
Even though it was around 5 years ago, I remember my first visit like it was just yesterday. I was suffering from severe anxiety and panic attacks. In 10 minutes, I was diagnosed with ‘being spoiled syndrome.’ The therapist assumed that since I had no ‘major’ trauma in my life (like a death of someone close to me or getting raped), then there is no reason for me to be feeling this way, that I was just being ‘spoiled.’
This scenario is one of many that Egyptians have to go through, the belittling of mental illness is a struggle, and more often than not, Egyptians have to suffer in silence, as a result of the stigma and the lack of awareness that surrounds mental illness in this country. As of 2018, according to a nationwide survey, 25% of the population suffers from mental illness. In Egypt, people can literally lose their jobs or not be eligible for marriage if they suffer from mental illness, and that is the best case scenario.
Via Tumblr
People experience mental illness in many different ways, some describe it as ‘a daily battle against yourself’ and others describe it as ‘a desire to live yet at the same time the desire to stop.’ However, the worst part about mental illness is that no one really understands the struggle, people just don’t get how it works. For example, when you start having an anxiety attack whilst driving to work and you have to park at the side of the road to take a few moments to catch your breath and calm yourself; good luck explaining your lateness to your boss who just wouldn’t understand what living with anxiety actually means.
I get it. Mental illness is hard to diagnose, it’s not a physical illness that you can touch or see, it’s less visible and people have a really hard time believing what they can’t see. And the truth is, a lot of times the sufferer doesn’t really understand what’s going on, therefore, explaining it becomes really difficult.
And even though mental illness cannot be seen but what people fail to realize is that if they look more carefully, they would actually be able to see the signs very clearly.
This post has been circulating Facebook for the last month — Via Mohamed Kassem
Suicide is the number one indicator that something is definitely wrong with how we deal with mental illness. We have to realize that people tend to discriminate between mental and physical health; we have to put an end to it and we can’t do that until we start treating mental illnesses as serious as physical illnesses. If we keep excluding mental health from our medical insurance plans then we are still sending out the message that mental health is not to be taken seriously.
