People with mental issues can be dangerous, if untreated

We need to get serious about mental health issues. Some people worry me when it comes to mental illness.

If one suffers from depression, bipolar disorder or even schizophrenia, it cannot possibly be a mental condition, it’s demons, drugs, or ancestors are unhappy. It can never be a mental illness.

So many people go untreated because, as a society, we have decided to shelve an issue that affects the lives of many people. The truth is sometimes as a society, we refuse to believe that the mental health of some people is not at the level we would like it to be, yet it is has nothing to do with external factors, but an inner war.

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We make jokes about mental capabilities with statements like “have you lost your mind?” or “is that your other voice speaking?”

It’s all good and funny when it has not knocked on our door – but it is a sad reality for those who have to every night dine at a table with mental instability. People with mental issues can be dangerous, if untreated. They are a bomb waiting for the most inopportune time to go off. A tightrope between life and death.

I am not putting down the importance of ancestry or those who believe in them, the existence of demons and “the forces of evil”.

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The issue at hand is that when someone’s life is hanging in the balance of reality and that of invisible ghosts, sometimes we need to recognise the struggle for what it really is.

Mental issues are real and the hangover consequences of their seeming drunken behaviour. As a society, black and white, let us learn from this, people with mental illnesses do not lose their status as human beings. They still count as people who matter.

If government had remembered that, some of the people in the Life Esidimeni tragedy might still be alive and perhaps on the road to recovery. We need to take care of those with mental illnesses. Tragedies of mental health like that of Life Esidimeni should never happen again.

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We need to protect those who are not in position to care for themselves. The cracks of our society are too full of vulnerable people that we neglect.