1 in 5 adult Pinoys have ‘psychiatric disorders’

Up to one in five adult Filipinos have “psychiatric disorders" and more people are developing mental disorders due to “extreme life experiences", doctors said Thursday. Dr Lourdes Ladrido-Ignacio, a former president of the Philippine Psychiatric Association, said between 17 to 20 percent of the country’s adult population have psychiatric disorders. About 10 to 15 percent of children aged 5 to 15 are believed to have mental problems. Ladrido-Ignacio also noted that in remote barrios without doctors, 50 percent of adults who consult at rural health centers were diagnosed to have some form of psychological illness. The National Statistics Office’s 2000 disability ranked mental illness as the third most common form of morbidity, or type of disease, after visual and hearing impairments among Filipinos. The same survey showed that 88 Filipinos out of every 100,000 population with mental problems. In 2004, a DOH-commissioned Social Weather Stations survey found that 0.7 percent of total Filipino households have a family member who has a psychological disorder such as depression, schizophrenia, epilepsy, and substance abuse. The World Health Organization defines mental health as a state of well-being that allows a person to realize his or her own abilities to cope with the normal stresses of life. The Department of Health, meanwhile, said “extreme life experiences" such as natural disasters, armed conflict, and the increasing number of family members going abroad to work have contributed to more Filipinos developing mental disorders. “We’ve tried to identify the components that could influence the mental status of a person and we found that life experiences such as disasters and armed conflict (affect one’s state of mind)," said Dr Yolanda Oliveros, director of the National Center for Disease Prevention and Control. Oliveros said addressing mental illness as a public health concern remains as a challenge since there are only 400 licensed psychiatrists practicing in the country. “That’s why we are telling them to decentralize, to train general practitioners and healthcare providers since these people are (in the frontline) of primary care," she said. The doctors spoke during Thursday’s convention of the Philippine Psychiatric Association, Inc. (PPA) at the Edsa Shangri-La Hotel in Mandaluyong City. -GMANews.TV