The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Early detection of mental disorders provides best results: experts

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 13, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Early detection of mental disorders provides best results: experts

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, OCT. 11. While the stigma attached to mental illness should be removed with increased awareness and education, the focus should be on early detection to achieve best results in treatment, said psychiatrists at a public interaction here on Sunday.

Early diagnosis was crucial as intervention could go a long way in arresting the deterioration. Family and friends were the pivotal points around which the detection and treatment revolve, they emphasised.

The panellists included Sheshadri Hariharan, V. Muthukrishnan, S. Viswanathan, Bharathi Visveswaran and S. Mohan Raj, all consultant psychiatrists at Apollo Hospitals.

The doctors said depression, a common form of mental illness usually preceded by stress, would be the world's second largest disability factor by 2010. The requirement, therefore, was dissemination of knowledge on mental illness and an attitudinal change in society.

Broadly categorising depression into three — reactive, biological and organic — the panellists said the common symptoms were sleep disturbance, loss of appetite, disinterestedness, a negative view of self, feeling of worthlessness, decline in sexual urge, guilt, and fall in performance levels. In children, irritability could be an indicator.

They also dwelt on schizophrenia, dementia, autism, obsessive compulsive disorder and Alzheimer's disease.

Action that interfered with work, relationships, mood and social behaviour of a person could be termed abnormal and early indicators of mental illness. Friends, neighbours and the immediate family could check for early symptoms and seek aid.

Treatment with medicines, the panellists said, was only one aspect of management of the disease; it involved rehabilitation, occupational therapy and several other interventions.

The portrayal of the mentally ill in mass media had an impact on the people seeking treatment and the doctors urged a self-critical evaluation of the materials put out by the media.

Radha Rajagopal, Director, Medical Education, Apollo Hospitals, said the community could help one another by forming self-help groups to help the patients come out of the dips.

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