The current situation on mental health in the Middle East

Opinion analysis by Tala Al Otaibi, Staff Writer

May 12th, 2020

How many times can you say that you went through a “tough time”? How many times have you sat down with yourself and thought, “I feel very low today”? The truth is, whether we have received a professional and official diagnosis or not, many of us must have experienced negative mental health symptoms at some point in our lives.

One of the most important things in life that is often neglected is mental health care. The neglect may come from ourselves, our family, our friends, our bosses, our doctors, or even our government officials. Despite growing awareness, the world still has a long way to go when it comes to fully grasping the importance of mental health and care. Mental health disorders, in many societies, are still socially stigmatized and not considered to be something that is categorically truly serious. Therefore, it is important to understand the importance of mental health and what it means to have a ‘healthy mind’. 

To start off, we must clearly define what “mental health” is. Simply, mental health consists of our own emotional, psychological, and social wellbeing. Mental health affects our life and many more things than we make ourselves aware of. In your everyday life, your mental state significantly impacts how you think, feel, and act. This means that your choices, the way you handle yourself, and how you act around others is greatly affected by how you feel mentally. Mental health is not something that is stagnant. In fact, it is everchanging. Your mental state is constantly developing from the moment you are born until your death. The reason that mental health is not stagnant is because it is affected by many factors.

Of those factors are your genetics and family history, but also your life experiences. You may notice that once you experience something traumatic, such as living through a global pandemic, it will affect the way you feel and see things. 

Why is mental health important? 

When you are struggling through something, you may notice that your eating and sleeping patterns change, your energy and motivation are decreased, you feel irritated and forgetful, and you may struggle to perform everyday tasks the same way. Hence, it is important to maintain emotional health in order to ensure that we can always promote our own productivity and effectiveness in our everyday lives. Mental health problems, like depression and anxiety, affect everyone around the globe, with no exceptions in regard to race, ethnicity, gender, age, or sexual orientation. 

If not diagnosed, acknolwged, and/or treated, mental health disorders may have extremely problematic long-term effects, of course everything is on a case by case basis. Firstly, and most obviously, your condition may worsen if neglected and left untreated. Furthermore, other disorders can develop with time – a domino effect. Secondly, many mental health disorders, specifically anxiety, weaken the immune system. This way, you could be prone to infections and other physical diseases. Thirdly, prolonged suffering may lead an individual to resort to drugs, tobacco, and other substances. Hence, this leads to further problems of substance misuse. 

Speaking on behalf of the perspective of an entire nation, having a population that suffers of untreated mental disorders is quite problematic for many reasons. As mentioned previously, untreated disorders have substantial effects on the overall wellbeing of an individual. If a person continuously struggles and his/her condition worsens, their productivity could significantly be impaired.

In the eyes of the economy and capitalism, that is challenging. With decreased productivity in the workforce, the economy is set to be negatively affected. Furthermore, avoiding physical illnesses that are a product of mental disorders will most definitely cut a major amount of costs in regard to healthcare. Lastly, when talking about substance misuse, we know that drugs have caused multiple issues around the world. Avoiding that issue would solve many problems related to crime. 

In the Arab world, the biggest issue is not the fact that the population suffers less when it comes to mental disorders. It is more of an issue that has to do with stigma and ignorance. Oftentimes, mental health disorders go unnoticed, undiagnosed, and untreated as a direct result of the stigma that consumes the Middle East and is embedded in its social context.

In Arab countries, formal mental health resources – clinics, practitioners, and more – are scarce. Because of the stigma, it becomes particularly difficult to assess and design prospective interventions to solve this issue. While some factors, such as religion and strong family ties, can have a positive cultural impact on those struggling with mental disorders, observations show that it does not eradicate the problem from the roots, and everything is on a case by case basis. The Middle East is in strong need of effective reforms, starting from the work of its government.

There currently exists an extensive issue pertaining to statistics. In the Middle East, for example, statistics and data on suicide rates, and the reasons behind the cases of suicides remain largely unknown, as many suicides are masked as other forms of death due to cultural or religious societal weights. An important first step to take is to tackle this issue.

Furthermore, the government needs to work on establishing more clinics and employing more mental health professionals. Much of the issue relating to the lack of treatment exists because of the lack of resources. In addition, mental health treatment tends to be quite expensive as most of it lies under the private sector. Therefore, governments must work on bettering their health care plans and insurance coverage plans in order to include care for mental health.

Despite the existing stigma, it is of utmost importance that every individual learns the effects of mental health problems and the crucial importance of taking care of themselves. The world has a long way to go before it develops in this realm. For that reason, it is the job of the youth to push for changes that will work for the betterment of their environment.