'A white person's problem'

‘The mentally ill frighten and embarrass us. And so we marginalize the people who most need our acceptance. What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation.’ – Glenn Close

Within four weeks of arriving, there had already been five suicides in the country. With only one mental health clinic in the whole of Uganda and 32 psychiatrists for a population of 34 million, there is a serious deficit. The word ‘mulalu’ is often used as an insult in everyday conversation, harmless in the eyes of most, but with its meaning of ‘crazy’ come many negative connotations for the mentally ill.

Uganda last amended its Mental Treatment Act (ever so slightly) in 1964, the original legislation dating from 1938, the year before the United States outlawed racial discrimination in voting.

Hearing depression being described as a ‘white person’s problem’ by someone hailing from the UK outlined our worries perfectly as a group living within a community with obvious problems in recognizing or addressing the issue effectively.

The issue of mental health in the developing world is often left unspoken – are there not more apparent and pressing issues such as hunger, poverty or other more accepted diseases such as HIV? Is it not true that when people have simpler problems they do not have depression? Were not suicide rates the lowest in Europe during the Second World War? Does the devil not make work for idle hands? Perhaps one day this disease will be acknowledged and no longer belong only to the West, yet even there it is far from understood or tolerated.

Saying that issues of prejudice and conflict, front-lined by the media, ‘have not been observed directly’ does not mean that they do not exist. It simply means there is always more to a place than what we see through our newspapers and screens. The more important aspects of simpler lives do not sell newspapers.