Despite the amount of money being sunk into awareness and the thousands of dedicated professionals we have working for a pittance, the way many people in this country treat the issue of mental health is nothing short of appalling.
There, I said it. I wish that it would come as a surprise to most of you reading this, but the truth is that both historically and culturally, we have always shown ourselves to be poorly equipped when it comes to doling out empathy and compassion for people who are somehow perceived to be different in one way or another from us.
I remember overhearing an exchange an old woman had with my grandmother when I was little. She was talking about a woman who would today be easily diagnosed as having postnatal depression. Instead of being suitably sympathetic, she stated that God was punishing her for getting married so quickly after her first husband had died. My grandmother muttered something about us not being in a position to judge anyone, but I remember asking her about it on the way home.
The fact is that conversations like these were not isolated incidents. Who hasn’t heard stories of mentally disabled children being kept hidden away from society or people talking in hushed tones about an aunt taken away in the dead of night and never spoken about again?
Like with many other things which are taboo in our society, we prefer to sweep things under the rug rather than face the prying eyes and ears of our neighbour from behind the rush curtain.
The first time I pulled up at Mount Carmel to attend what I think was some kind of fundraiser, I felt unsettled by the eeriness of it all. It reminded me of those haunted Victorian mansions you see in horror films and the air around it felt thick and heavy with sadness. When pictures emerged later on of the state that the wards were in, I was nothing short of horrified.
Everyone knows about the correlation between environment and mental well-being, and yet, in the one place on the island where it should matter the most, we have gravely and seriously been letting people down.
The greatness of a nation is not measured in how well its economy is doing- Anna Marie Galea
It isn’t just the shabby, derelict state of the building either. In June 2019, a parliamentary committee was told that patients had to endure freezing showers during winter because there was a lack of hot water and, just a month later, nurses planned a walkout over the lack of safety as well as the unbearable temperatures that they were facing due to several air conditioners no longer working.
Just last month, a shocking account of a woman’s stay at the institution had me in tears. While praising the dedicated staff, her depiction of the female ward is something truly depressing where she states, “If you aren’t mentally ill to begin with, the conditions the place is in will certainly drive you mad”.
It should go without saying that this cannot go on. We apparently have all the tax money on earth to spend on roads, roundabouts, monuments and monumental egos, but very little on helping our truly vulnerable. Even more disgusting is how little people seem to care.
The greatness of a nation is not measured in how well its economy is doing but by the way that it chooses to use that money when it comes to investing in its people. We should not continue to look away and ignore the suffering of others because we feel it is removed from our own experience, or worse still, a source of shame. Don’t you think they deserve better?