Dear Editor,

Walk through any of our town centres and invariably you will see mentally ill people lying on the streets, sleeping on the floor in plazas, or walking the road in dirty clothes and going through garbage for food.

Just recently, I went to KFC in Mandeville and saw the familiar face of a young man who became mentally ill a few years ago. He was standing in the car park at KFC, dirty, smelly and begging something to eat. I stopped to find out from him where he was living and what happened to his parents. He told me that he was living on the streets for months now as his father threw him out of the house because he was not practising proper hygiene and self-care.

As I listened to his story, I felt despair. How can your own family, that should provide love, protection and support, sentence you to the “human scrap heap” to fight your illness alone? How can a Government that is supposed to protect the vulnerable turn a blind eye towards the community of the mentally ill. The most vulnerable are the least protected, respected and cared for in our country.

When are we going to show the community of the mentally ill that we care and they are not alone? No one should ever have to fight their illness alone. Imagine a mentally ill person experiencing a psychotic episode and there is no family, friend, colleague, or mental health system readily available to render assistance. The lack of self-care and proper hygiene among mentally ill people is a cry for help.

As a mental health patient for close to 30 years, I have seen and experienced some of the grave challenges of mental illness. I am deeply concerned about the way our society treats mentally ill people. I am moved to tears when I see them eating from garbage or sleeping on the streets. Maybe because of my own affliction, I am outraged by the way the community of the mentally ill suffers from scandalous rates of joblessness, homelessness, and spouseless living. While I am fortunate to have a job, a family and a strong social support system, I know it is not the lived reality of most mentally ill people in Jamaica.

I am calling on the Government to direct more resources to mental health. The hundreds of mentally ill people on the streets is due more to a lack of love, leadership, empathy, and care rather than a lack of resources. Every mentally ill person has a family and a Government that should protect his/her well-being. Living with dignity and enjoying basic human rights should be understood as a birthright of all Jamaicans, which includes the mentally ill. We must act decisively to respect, protect, and fulfil, in practice, the human dignity and equal rights of all our people.

The Government must move with urgency to establish programmes aimed at eradicating stigma, build more transitional centres, beef up the crisis response units in all regions, while making available more atypical antipsychotic medication in the public pharmacies. This is not too much to ask if we are committed to the upliftment of the mentally ill.

Sickness does not discriminate, and mental illness is just another illness which is a legitimate part of our human experiences. We can do better for the mentally ill. I know we can, and I expect that we will.

After over 4,000 years of stigma, discrimination, abuse, and negative labels, the time has come for the mentally ill to be given a fair chance to lead a normal life in which our human dignity is respected and protected.

Andre’ Wellington

Mental health patient and advocate

andrewellington344@gmail.com