Mental Health Disorders in Inner City Communities

The direct link between mental illness and poverty in the inner city is well established.

A World Health Organization (WHO) report on mental health published in 2003 noted that "mental disorders occur in persons of all genders, ages, and backgrounds. No group is immune to mental disorders, but the risk is higher among the poor, homeless, the unemployed and persons with low education".

Psychiatric surveys done around the world since the 1930s have reported a higher incidence of mental illness in low-income communities. A 2007 review article published by the Department of Psychiatry at the Christian Medical College in India chronicled research which pointed out that poverty, acting through economic stressors, such as unemployment and lack of affordable housing, is more likely to precede mental illnesses, such as depression and anxiety, thus making it an important risk factor for mental illness.

As Mental Health Awareness Week is being celebrated this week, under the theme 'Dignity in Mental Health', senior lecturer in the Department of Community Health and Psychiatry at the University of the West Indies, Dr Roger Gibson, is calling for a national programme to provide targeted mental-health services to inner-city communities.

"There needs to be a widespread programme which provides mental-health services for inner-city communities ... . The programme needs to be more proactive than reactive ... . These kinds of intervention tend to come about when there is a call for something to be done, ... but it should be the norm to have those kinds of services," Gibson told The Gleaner.

EXPLORING ISSUES

Since 2004, Gibson and a team from the Department of Commu-nity Health and Psychiatry have implemented several projects which use cultural therapy and audiovisual engagement to explore mental-health issues faced by inner-city youth.

For Gibson, those projects need to be expanded in order to effectively address mental-health issues plaguing inner-city residents.

"There are some mental-health disorders that occur more commonly in children and young people than in adults, and many of those are what you typically find playing out in the inner-city setting, so these will include things like conduct disorder ... [and] oppositional defiant disorder ... . Anxiety issues are [also] pretty common, as are depressive-type conditions," he explained.

Intervention at schools within inner cities is also being suggested, given that young people within these communities tend to be less able to cope with mental-health issues.