BATTLING A MENTAL HEALTH EPIDEMIC

BATTLING A MENTAL HEALTH EPIDEMIC It is already a well-established fact that the Covid-19 pandemic also triggered what could be called a mental health pandemic. It does not mean however that since the Covid-19 pandemic has practically slowed down, that the mental health pandemic has also slowed down. For the record, no one has officially declared the mental health problem is already a pandemic, but I suggest that we already make that declaration, so that we could respond to the problem with the attention that it needs. As far as I know, no one has declared that the Covid-19 pandemic is officially over, with most governments merely saying that it is now reduced to being a manageable epidemic, whatever that means. What is clear however, is that no one has also declared that the mental health pandemic is also over, in fact many governments would even hesitate to call it an epidemic. The fact remains however that globally, 1 out of 8 are affected according to the WHO, and locally, at least 3.6 million Filipinos are affected, according to the DOH. If that is not alarming enough, the DOH is also saying that the numbers could even go higher if more data is available. What does that mean? That means that we should do a better job in collecting the data, and not only that, we should do it better and faster. We should also all agree that the DOH is not the villain here, because it appears that they are doing what they could do given their limitations. That said, our common task ahead is to build a national database of all those affected. As a manager of databases, I would suggest that the best place to start is below, because there is no other place to start anyway, except below. What that means is that the data should be collected at the lowest source, and that is none other than the barangay level. In theory, the barangay councils would know how and where to get the data. In theory, they are supposed to know best the people in their barangay, and they could easily find out who would most likely be affected by mental health issues. I think that it would be safe to assume that social workers could be the first front liners who could identify the people who are probably affected by mental health issues. They are the ones who could refer these people to guidance counselors who could in turn refer these people to psychiatrists. In the barangays that have their own doctors, these doctors could refer directly to the psychiatrists. Let us act on this problem ASAP. IKE SENERES/7-28-2024