“Somebody cannot be on a three or four-storey building and look down. Somebody cannot be on a plane and sit by the window and look down. He/she will feel like the plane is crashing, fear of height is a mental health disorder. But somebody else will not know…so all those and many others are minor mental disorders”
The majority of patients with significant mental problems are individuals who are unaware that they have such a condition, according to the CEO of the Mental Health Authority (MHA).
“There are the major ones the person does not realize he or she has one. Those on the streets dirty and unkempt, drinking from the gutter”, he explained.
He claims that mental illness affects more people than only those living on the streets, stressing that both minor and serious cases should not be disregarded.
“Mental illness is not one entity…Malaria is one entity. There are over 300 conditions that fall under mental illness but we tend to lump them as one condition. You can put all the over 300 conditions under two categories; the major and the minor. The minor ones the person knows he or she has a problem others won’t know “, he revealed.