THEIR CAUSES AND CURES.
[ Read at the Dunham College of Homoeopathy, Re-Union on 10-2- 40].
The laws of physical health have been disseminated in many ways for years but the question of mental health, which is just as important, has been sadly neglected. “Mens Sana in Corpore Sano” is an old adage but its value has seldom been realised. Every parent is anxious to see his child;s health improved but how many realise that it is equally imperative to take care of its mental health, for any disease of the mind adversely affects the health.
According to psychologists most of our mental ill-health starts in the early childhood, in fact before the fifth year of life. If we could bring up every child in a normal way free from mental impediments the number of adult neurotics would become surprisingly low. Preventive measures applied to children are likely to be more fruitful in the domain of mental disease than in the case of physical troubles.
Every human being like every other animal is a product of heredity and environment. A man is born with certain special aptitude either for good or bad. Hereditary tendencies remain latent uptil they find a suitable environment for their development. According to the conditions favourable or unfavourable a child becomes useful or useless, even a dangerous member of the society.
(2).
Very few people are aware of the fact that the mind has its disorders like those of the body. The sufferings of mental disease often excel the most intense form of physical pain such as that of cancer. Mans natural aim in life is happiness. Such happiness is largely an attitude of mind; it follows that only the healthy of balanced mind can attain it.
Gita has truly said:.
The disciplined self, moving among object with sense free from attraction and repulsion, mastered by the self, goeth to peace.
In that peace the extinction of all pains ariseth for him; for, of him, whose heart is peaceful the Reason soon attaineth equilibrium.
It is one of the reasons why in old days out forefathers and sages enjoined on Brahamacharya so rigidly from the boyhood.
With the spread of modern civilisation and the artful and artificial ways of living, number of mental patients is growing increasingly high.
A reference to the Statistical Abstract for British India published by the Government of India will reveal that the number of patients Years No. of patients.
admitted.
1923 9,845.
1926 10.201.
1929 11.402.
1932 12.823.
1933 13,323.
1934 13,506.
1936 13,251
admitted every year into the Mental Hospitals of India is on the increase. The Mental Hospitals mainly admit insane people for treatment. The Statistics therefore depict only a small minority of the a vast section of people suffering from various mental disorders for which no statistics can possibly be maintained. One naturally asks why this is so? This is one of the many straight questions to which there is no straight answer.
The subject of mental diseases is so expansive that only a fringe of the great problem involved can be covered within the limits of this brief survey. The causes are so vague and varied that it is difficult to synthesize the symptoms within the scope of a standard formula. From what we see our every day life, the commonest causes appear to be an unhappy home, unhappy marriage, disappointment in love affairs and business, frustrated ambition, financial embarrassments, psychic suppression, sexual excess, excessive mental exertion or worries and similar other causes which perpetually disturb the mental equanimity.
Modern civilisation has made people luxurious and fashionable. Like a contagious disease the craving for amenities and comforts is becoming more and more apparent amongst all classes of people whether rich or poor. One might not have two meals a day for his hungry stomach, nevertheless, he does not hesitate to beg or to borrow and find money even at the expense of his honesty and pride to keep pace with the fashionable society.
Consequently his mental equilibrium is disturbed by the perpetual mental conflicts between his attempts to meet the ever increasing of desires. This increased suppression and repression of the natural instinct in modern civilisation is one of the most important factors of the mental diseases which are so prevalent now-a-days.
Pomp and pageantry are often synonymous with vulgarity. It is, therefore, wise to remember that what is added to the luxury and comforts for the body is always at the subtraction and starvation of the mind. The maxim “Plain living and high thinking” inculcated by the sages, is the sine-quanon of happy and harmonious life.
As mental diseases arise mostly from mal-adaptation to environments, a change in the outlook of social, political and economical order of things is necessary.
The vicious environments of the city-life, the perverted ideas, half-truths and untruths about sex-life, the faulty education exert a demoralising influence on the immature mind of the young adults. It is in this period of adolescence that most boys and girls become moral wrecks and consequently suffer from various mental disorders which eventually increase the number of neurotics.
Mental disorders are also due to the inability of the patients to face facts within themselves. Realisation of facts at their true value gives us sympathy and understanding. It is to this world we must adapt ourselves and we must therefore correlate our inner-world of mind with the outer.
Young men are always imaginative. In their early college days they dream of a happy and brilliant future but immediately on completion of their vocation in right earnest, they confront an unsympathetic, wicked and hopeless world diametrically opposite to their fanciful ideas. Difficulties and obstacles await them at every turn and in frantic despair driven from pillar to post in vain search of employment, they bring destruction upon their helpless life or become mentally unbalanced.
To correlate our vocation in life with our personal mental trends is an important factor and parents very often mar the prospect of their children by placing them in positions which their individuality unfits them. The natural consequence is obvious.
Besides the social, political and economical reasons, mental aberrations and insanity may arise from the following conditions:.
1. Heredity:.
(a) Insanity.
(b) Epileptic.
(c) Alcoholism.
2. Mental inability as revealed by:.
(a) Moral deficiency.
(b) Congenital defect.
(c) Eccentricity.
3. Critical periods of life:.
(a) Puberty and adolescence.
(b) Climacteric Period.
(c) Puerperal stage.
4. Excessive brain work and mental strain.
5. Indulgence in Toxic substances like Alcohol, Ganja, Cocaine, etc.
6. Excess in venery or undue sexual suppression.
7. Disease of the nervous system:.
(a) Lesions of Brain and Spinal cord.
(b) Epilepsy.
8. Shocks and sudden fright.
Since many cases of mental ill-health crop up during the adolescent period it behoves the parents now to be always in close touch with their children and guide them along the right path by friendly discourse and company.
With the awakening of mature instincts great care needs to be exercised so that in their youthful exuberance, and due to ignorance, they do not commit any act of foolishness. An intelligent father or mother should anticipate that and train their children to be frank and open with them, for suppression and repression at such and age beget a breeding ground for future mental ill-health. They should try to satisfy their natural curiosities in a proper and decent way. They should be wise enough to recognize that sexual gratification is an instinctive impulse and physiological craving require satisfaction for health, unless by cultural process the animal passions are guided to some higher channels.
They should bear in mind also that no hard and fast rule can be laid down as regards continence and each case must be judged on its individual merits. Some people remain continent without any adverse effect on their health, while others become neurotic and unhealthy under undue repression.
Mental disorder may be roughly divided into three main categories:.
(1) Neurosis.
(2) Psychoneurosis, and.
(3) the Psychoses.
The actual neurosis are neurasthenia and those which are due to constant worries and anxieties.
Psychoneurosis-embraces hysteria, the.
Compulsions, obsessional neurosis, hypochondria, Melancholia and Mania.
Psycosis- insanity, dementia, idiocy and epilepsy.
As regards treatment, the old school of treatment has nothing much to say and do, Lt. Col. Owen Berkeley Hill., I.M.S., who was associated with one of the Mental Hospitals in India, expressed his disappointment in the following lines: “Unfortunately there are not medicines for mental ill-health and very probably there never will be. Complete sympathy with and thorough understanding of the sufferers troubles are the only instruments in the doctors hand.”.
Indeed, mental disorders and symptoms had not meaning in Allopathy until after the last great war, when a large number of patients suffered from various sorts of mental disorders; doctors found meaning in the symptoms for the first time. People were mostly under the impression that all these mental disorders are due to prepossession of the mind by evil spirit.
