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Psychophobia: prejudice against people with mental disorders worsens symptoms

In this Tuesday (16) edition of the Medical Correspondent panel, of Novo Dia, neurosurgeon Fernando Gomes explained how psychophobia — prejudice against people with mental disorders — can affect psychiatric patients.

In Brazil, around 50 million people suffer some type of mental illness, according to data from the Brazilian Psychiatric Association. Diagnoses are varied: depression, mood disorders, attention deficit, anxiety, among others. These are diseases that can affect all age groups, from children to the elderly.

The doctor explains that any mental disorder can seem invisible to other people and, therefore, those close to them are not always able to perceive the suffering of the psychiatric patient.

“When prejudice is placed on top of this, light is shed on this problem as if it were discovering the person and giving it a much greater relevance than what it might actually represent. Therefore, this prejudice can be extremely harmful and even aggravate some mental problems”, said Fernando Gomes.

The expert also points out that, historically, there has always been a concern to identify mental health as an important trait to trust and validate what the person said.

“When you say ‘the person is not doing very well in mental health’, inwardly, he will already imagine that he is not found to be trustworthy, that he cannot have responsibilities or that, suddenly, he may have an outbreak or unpredictable behavior. That’s why this prejudice exists and one way to fight it is by talking about it and with the existence of information campaigns”, he said.

(Posted by: André Rigue)

Reference: CNN Brasil

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