Mind your mind

Mourrine Wambugu

On 10th October,2019, we celebrated the World Mental Health Awareness Day and it is clear that most of us know mental illness is a serious illness that can actually kill! I spoke to Dr.James Maweu, an accredited pyschologist, to educate us more on mental illness.This is how it unfolded:

1.Mourrine:Dr. Maweu, what is mental illness?

Dr.Maweu:Mental illness disrupts a person’s thoughts, emotions and sometimes relationships. A person might be facing troubles or having fears that disrupts him/her from functioning at 100%.That’s basically the definition in a lay man’s language.

2.Mourrine:What are some of the categories of mental illness?

Dr. Maweu: We have 4 categories of mental illnes. I have personally graded them into:

1. Anxiety disorders e.g phobias you have that interfere you from doing something specifically, it becomes a disorder.
2. We have eating disorders where, when you get mad you start stress eating (I call it stress eating) or binge eating. That’s a disorder.
3. We also have mood disorders which I can classify them as bipolar 1&2;now you are happy and the next minute you are mad and when asked, you don’t even know why you are mad or happy.
4. Then,we have personality disorders whereby you can occupy several personalities within you and you can’t quite define yourself.

3.Mourrine: What can you say are some of the causes of mental illness?

Dr. Maweu: Some of the causes of the mental illness are: Biological causes like genetics, psychological causes and social cultural causes. In social cultural causes, I believe ni ile utamaduni(they are those traditions).You believe that ‘umerogwa’ (you are bewitched),yeah.

4.Mourrine: Mh, interesting. What are some of the signs of this condition?

Dr. Maweu: Ah, there is a scientific model that categorizes the signs in mainly 4 Ds.

Number one we have dysfunction of the body whereby sometimes you can be hallucinating and seeing imaginary things.

You can also be endangering yourself. That is posing danger to yourself and others around you. For instance, you could cut yourself for no good reason ‘unajikata kata tu’

There is also denial as a sign. Some people deny that they are actually suffering. This could make them engage in drugs as a result.

And lastly, we have distress of the mind when you have those racing, endless thoughts. Could be suicidal or sad thoughts causing you stress.

5.Mourrine: OK, is mental illness treatable? If yes, what are some of the ways of treating it?

Dr. Maweu: Yes, it is treatable. First you must see a psychologist who in turn will put you in medication and then give you drugs. He /she will in turn fit you in social groups where you will share your story with others and get to see you were not the only one who was suffering this whole time. With this, you can help each other get out of mental illness.

6.Mourrine: Finally, what is the advice that you can give to these people suffering from mental illness?

Dr. Maweu: You know, we all have pressures of life. When you have this ‘off’ or weird feeling, you need to visit a psychologist or a therapist so that he can help you get out of this condition and give you professional help. We also need to stop viewing those having mental illness as weak people. They are not weak people rather, they are just like us. Let’s speak up to our close friends and family when we have these stray thoughts.Afterall, life is not that serious!

For more information on mental health issues, contact Dr.Maweu, an accredited and practicing pyschologist in Kenya, on +254753628135.