We often speak about expats who are in hospital with physical ailments ranging from broken bones to chronic illness. What we don’t discuss are the mental challenges that people face, the psychiatric breakdown that sometimes overtakes them in the course of a life far from the natural support system of family and the milieu of one’s own city or village. Although Bahrain, with its harmonious social environment is easier to settle into, it is a fact that many expats are vulnerable to the grinding loneliness of their lives and there is no class-bar that mental illness respects.
Of late, it has become a trend for celebrities to speak out about their mental pressures and send out the signal that it is okay to seek help for mental issues. Indian actress Deepika Padukone has even started an NGO to reach out to people suffering from depression, the much-misunderstood mental condition that has pushed such brilliant people such as actor-comedian Robin Williams and more recently, legendary handbag designer Kate Spade and TV traveller chef Anthony Bourdain to suicide. The gifted and successful Indian singer-songwriter Honey Singh made public his bipolar condition. All this goes to prove that mental illness is no respecter of status and curiously, one can be a genius and still fall victim to it.
That’s the first lesson we should learn – not to shun people who have a mental condition and to make the extra effort to include them in the workplace and in the circle of leisure activities that we enjoy. As a society with over 52 per cent expats, I feel we don’t discuss expat mental illness enough. When we hear of the horrifying consequences – knife-fight and multiple stab murders committed because of ‘voices in the head’ or the suicide of school children, it is usually too late to save the victims. But it is not too late to help others in a similar position, is it? Just like the government of Bahrain has made available core health services for the body, it should also have more psychiatric and counselling care for expats with professionals who understand their culture and their language and can help them meet the challenge of their condition.
The Psychiatric Hospital run by the government does accept expatriate patients but what about channels for help before things come to that pass? Early care for expats with mental conditions is still very much left to community volunteers and religious leaders and there is no professional, trained intervention or a standard template of care and quality.
These days the whole methodology of mental health care has shifted and is therapy, counselling and medication-based. The last mile we have to traverse is acceptance of people with mental issues in our midst and help them in their unique journey through life. If we see a blind person, don’t we help her to cross the road? A person grappling with mental issues may not show a physical sign of it and it is up to all of us to create a social environment conducive to discussing mental conditions openly, removing the stigma so that these conditions can be addressed clearly and with the latest therapy, knowledge and medication available to secure the happiness of the sufferers and make them productive members of our community.