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On the tenth of October of each year, the World Health Organization celebrates World Mental Health Day, and takes this occasion as an opportunity to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining mental health.
The United Nations website says that about one billion people worldwide suffer from some form of mental disorder, every 40 seconds someone dies as a result of suicide. It is now recognized that depression is the leading cause of illness and disability among children and adolescents.
Adolescence and mental illness
The World Health Organization says that the period of adolescence and the first years of adulthood are two stages of life in which many changes occur in an individual's life, such as changing school, leaving home, starting studies at university or practicing work new>
For many, these are exciting times, but they can also be stressful and anxious times. These feelings can lead to psychopathy.
The organization stated that the individual can suffer additional pressures resulting from the expansion of the use of electronic technologies, in addition to the fact that there are many adolescents who live in areas affected by humanitarian emergencies, such as conflicts, natural disasters and epidemics, and young people, in particular, who live in These cases of disorders and psychological disorders.
Official health statistics in Britain revealed that about one in four adolescent girls in England suffers from mental illness problems, and emotional disorders, depression and anxiety are the most common phenomena among these problems.
A report by the National Health Authority in Britain (NHS) showed that the exposure rate of young women aged 17 to 19 years to these problems was twice the exposure of young men of the same age to them, with a rate of 23.9 percent of mental disorders among young women. The National Institutes of Health (NHS) in Britain revealed that the rate of exposure of young women between the ages of 17 and 19 to these problems was twice that of young men of the same age, with a rate of 23.9 percent of mental disorders among young women.
These problems appear to be less common in younger age groups, but are nonetheless slowly increasing.
And the ratio becomes among children from the age of 5 to 15, one in nine suffers from disorders, that is, it increased from the ratio of one to ten that it was in the survey that was conducted 13 years ago.
These results were based on a survey of more than 9,000 young men and women.
The psychiatrist, Bernadka Dubica, of the Royal College, indicated that the numbers of young girls who suffer from these problems are “alarming.”
The review of the Digital Health Statistics Authority reveals that children aged 11 to 19 who suffer from mental health problems are the most frequent users of social media.
One-third of them spend more than four hours a day on social media platforms.
Those without mental health problems were 2 to 3 times less likely to spend this amount of time on social media.
Young people with mental health issues were more likely to say that the number of “likes” they get on social media affects them, and more likely to compare themselves to others on social media.
The report also discusses the problems of bullying they are exposed to in cyberspace.
Although this suggests that social media can have a negative impact, it does not prove that it is to blame.
People who suffer from psychological problems may be more likely to find themselves in them, rather than blaming them for causing their problems in the first place, and even use these methods to seek help and assistance.
She added that concerns about body image, exam stress and the negative impact of social media may all disproportionately affect girls, while at the same time they may be more likely to become victims of abuse and sexual assault.
This topic raises many questions, including: What is the oldest mental hospital known to the world?
If you go to the giant search engine Google or the National Health Service website in Britain with this question, you will get the answer. It is the Bethlem Royal Hospital outside London.
However, the Encyclopedia Britannica says that the oldest mental hospitals in the Arab world were established in Baghdad, Cairo and Damascus.
The psychiatric and mental patients in the Arab world were receiving treatment in bimaristans, and the first bimaristan was established in the Islamic world in the city of Damascus, by order of the Umayyad caliph Al-Walid bin Abd al-Malik in 707 AD.
In the Levant, too, there was the great al-Nuri bimaristan in Damascus, which was established by King al-Adil Nur al-Din ibn Mahmud Zangi around the year 1154.
In Iraq, there were Al-Rashid Bimaristan, Al-Muqtadiri Bimaristan, and Mosul Bimaristan, but the most famous of them was Al-Adadi Bimaristan, which was established by Adud al-Dawla ibn Buwayh in 978 in Baghdad.
In Egypt, there was the ancient Bimaristan, which was established by Ahmed Ibn Tulun in the year 872 AD in Fustat, and the Mansoori Bimaristan, also called Qalawun Bimaristan, which was ordered to be built by King Mansour Qalawun al-Salhi.
Among the most prominent names that had emerged in this field were Abu Bakr Muhammad al-Razi, the greatest physician of Arabs and Muslims in the Middle Ages, who provided a detailed description of mental illness, and Abu Ali al-Hussein bin Abdullah bin al-Hasan bin Ali bin Sina, the first ancient philosophers who linked The functions of sensations, imagination, and memory in their physiological terms, as well as Gabriel bin Bakhchio, Wahid Al-Zaman, and others.
Bethlem Royal Hospital
However, the Royal Bethlem Hospital, near the British capital, London, remains the oldest hospital still operating in this field today, according to the British National Health Service NHS website and the giant search engine, Google.
So what is the story of this hospital?
When it was rebuilt in 1676, Bethlem Hospital in London was the most luxurious mental asylum in the world on the outside, but on the inside it was completely different.
The hospital was a famous landmark in London, and was visited by tourists along with Westminster Abbey and the Zoo.
The hospital has been the inspiration for countless poems, plays and works of art. The building that had housed it since 1676 seemed so grand that it could not be compared to anything other than the Palace of Versailles.
This was Bethlem Hospital, better known by its nickname Bedlam.
Almost from the beginning, Bethlem was much more than a mental institution.
"Bethlem was a landmark in the City of London, and one of the first mental hospitals in the world," says Mike Jay, author of "In This Way Madness Comes".This hospital has become the original home of insanity,” he added.
a religious community
Like many ancient hospitals, Bethlem Hospital began with a religious community and was founded in 1247 as a monastery dedicated to Saint Mary in Bethlehem.
By 1400 it had become a medieval hospital, and that meant less medical care than providing “refuge for strangers in need” — those who had nowhere else to go turned to the doors of the abbey.
Over time, Bethlem Hospital began to specialize in caring for those who were not only poor, but also unable to take care of themselves, especially those considered “insane”.
By the 17th century, this hospital was well known enough to appear in many Jacobean dramas and poems.
Often, as in Shakespeare's Hamlet and Macbeth, it has been used as a way to explore the common question of who is mad, who is sane and who has the power to decide.
The final part of Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton's comedy The Honest Whore in 1604 shows that thread between "reason" and "madness" and the fear of how easily it can slip from one to the other.
In this comedy, the hospital cleaner cheerfully says: “I sweep the rooms of the insane, bring them straw, buy chains to tie them up, and rods to flog them. I was crazy here once, but I thank Father Anselm he beat me and brought me to my senses again.”
After the hospital was rebuilt, it became even easier to sneer at slipping between sanity and madness thanks to its grandiose architecture.
Like a palace
When the second version of the hospital was built in 1676, it was unlike any hospital built before.
It was designed by Robert Hooke, city surveyor, natural philosopher and assistant architect and noted mathematician Sir Christopher Wren.
The façade of the hospital is 165 meters long with Corinthian columns and a tower topped with a dome, and that façade was inspired by the Tuileries Palace in Paris during the reign of Louis XIV.
The hospital overlooked formal gardens and tree-lined parks.
The general impression was that it was more like the French king's opulent palace at Versailles than a mental hospital.
In the words of one of the writers, “It was the only building that looked like a palace in London for many years.”
It was part of trying to recreate London as something great and modern, rather than the old medieval wooden buildings that this part of London consisted of before the fire, and it was also a sense of pride and philanthropy, this hospital He would make London a greater and better place for all, and it was often called the palace of madmen.”
The new hospital was, quite literally, putting a pretty face on what many Londoners saw as an unsavory, chaotic problem.
“The Maddest”
The satirist Thomas Browne wrote in 1699 that design makes you wonder, “Who is the craziest? Are they the people who ordered the construction of this hospital or those who live in it?”
In 1681, the city's rulers noticed "the great number of people who came daily to see the sick."
Mentioned by Jonathan Andrews and others in The History of Bethlem, there is no question that the hospital was a popular attraction.
This was also encouraged by the hospital itself, benefiting from donations from visitors as well as from any subsequent charitable donations.
As the hospital grew in popularity, it also became a way of life. By the 17th century, patients with difficult conditions were called “the madmen of Bethlem.”
The beggars were feigning madness, to avoid being sent to a workhouse or to prison, as the Poor Relief Act of 1601 stated that the poor who did not work went to the workhouses or even to prison.
Hence, Bethlem Hospital is no longer a symbol of “madness” only, but also of chaos, and has become a symbol of London itself.In 1815 the stately Bethlem Hospital was demolished to disappear the “only” palace-like building in London, and today the hospital operates in a modern facility with a museum open to the public.
Celebrities and mental illness
But what about the process of raising awareness of this disease? In fact, when the World Health Organization celebrates World Mental Health Day, this occasion is an opportunity to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining mental health.
A number of stars and celebrities have worked to spread awareness about mental health by sharing with the world their experience of depression and lack of self-confidence.
Among them is Lady Gaga, who was very open when she talked about her experience and suffering with depression, which afflicted her after being raped, when she was 19 years old.
She also revealed in 2016 that she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder or (PTSD), a disorder caused by very stressful, frightening or painful events in 2016, and said that she “still fights this disease every day.”
Gaga decided to speak to show the world that stars and celebrities also have mental health problems, but the important thing is to diagnose and treat the condition before the disease kills them.
As revealed by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, he "was on several occasions close to a severe nervous breakdown." He said that he had suppressed his emotions for 20 years, since he was 12 years old, after the shock of the death of his mother, Princess Diana, in an accident in 1997.
He said that had he not attended therapy sessions with a psychological counselor and taken boxing courses, he would have been on the verge of influencing and putting pressure on other people.
The actor Stephen Fry was diagnosed, as it was found that he suffers from “bipolar disorder” or manic depression, which is one of the psychological disorders that is characterized by alternating periods of depression with periods of abnormal exhilaration, and leads the person to perform reckless and irresponsible actions. And out of the ordinary.
Stephen Fry had attempted suicide at the age of 17, and spent his life abusing alcoholic beverages and drugs in an attempt to stop the voices in his head, as he described it.
When he reached the age of 37, he commented, "It is the first time that I find an explanation for my miserable and miserable life."
Since the release of his 2006 documentary about his severe depression, “The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive,” it has been a powerful resource for removing the stigma surrounding mental health. Frey was called “the master of the mind,” and there was almost no occasion for him to talk about mental health.
Then he confirmed that he had recovered slowly, and with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William and Kate, he established a mental health charity.
Singer Nicole Scherzinger revealed that she suffered from an eating disorder as a teenager and during her time with The Pussycat Dolls.
Nicole said that "bulimia stole all her happiness, memories and self-confidence".
The disease of bulimia or excessive appetite for food, and then trying to get rid of it as quickly as possible for fear of gaining weight, is more common among adolescent girls than other groups.
Nicole said that when she talked about her experience, she helped many who suffer from the same disease and encouraged them to be proud of themselves and their shape, to love their bodies regardless of their weight, and not to be hard on themselves and accept what they are.
But there are celebrities in the Arab world whose name is associated with mental illness for unhealthy reasons.
Among them were the famous comedian Ismail Yassin and the writer poet Naguib Sorour, who were among the most famous inmates of Abbasiya Hospital (the psychiatric hospital in Egypt).
Ismail Yassin entered the hospital because of a joke, “Once there was a crazy person like you,” a sentence that Yassin said to King Farouk, so the king got angry and replied angrily, “What are you saying, crazy?” It was only Ismail Yassin pretended to faint in order to get out of his confusion and embarrassment.
Farouk did not miss the matter and sent his private doctor to see Ismail Yassin, and when the doctor came, he discovered his state of confusion and tried to get him out of the dilemma by writing a report to the king about his bad nervous condition that made him lose consciousness temporarily.
After that, Farouk decided to send Ismail to the mental hospital, to receive treatment there. Indeed, Ismail stayed in the hospital for 10 days, and received treatment at his own expense.
In 1971, the confrontation between Najib Sorour and the Egyptian government worsened, after the play “The Blue Flies” was shown, which discussed the liquidation process that the Palestinian resistance was subjected to at the hands of the Jordanian army, known as the “Black September” events, and the Jordanian intelligence intervened with the Egyptian authorities to stop it.
The confrontations ended with Sorour being expelled from his work and isolated from cultural life in Egypt. His works were also subjected to literary assassination, and his name and contributions in the cultural fields were marginalized. He wrote poems criticizing the policy of Anwar Sadat's government, which he accused of suppressing public freedoms and freedom of expression, dominating intellectuals and abuse. citizens.
The various charges were fabricated against him and he was admitted to the mental hospital in Abbasiya, where he stayed until his death in 1978 after he was disappointed and despaired. He said: “I know that I will die at the age of roses. You say, O my eyes, he died at the age of roses.. and a gang says we got rid of him, who is after him?
Corona and mental illness
In light of the Corona virus epidemic that the world is still living through until now, doctors and psychologists have warned of the “profound” effects of the epidemic on mental health at the present time and in the future.
These researchers called for the use of smart phones in real-time monitoring of the mental health status of specific societal groups, especially children and frontline workers in the health sector.
The researchers identified 8 groups that may be affected by the epidemic more than other groups of society, especially in cases of closures that arise from the epidemic, and these categories are:
- Children, young people, and families (school closures, domestic violence, no free school meals)
- The elderly and those with health problems (isolation, loneliness, loss)
- Those with mental health problems (discontinuation of treatment and relapses)
- The front lines of medical staff (concerns about infection, work stress)
- Those with learning difficulties (change in routine and support)
- People with low incomes (job and economic insecurity)
- prisoners, the homeless, and refugees (social exclusion)
- Society in general may sense an increase in the differences in health levels, and may witness a demand for the use of food banks