Friday July 1st (Mental health issues)

Friday July 1^st

Third day of collecting household surveys and we are super tired. I feel like I am a lot flexible but I am glad that we have started collecting our data. We have almost finished 1/3 of San Martin in 3 days. Isn’t that amazing? We have really hustled and bustled in the hot sun. The weather seems to be holding its wrath from us but the skies are turning gray so maybe they are slowly going to let loose and prevent us from doing any work.  I woke up at 7am and left the house at 7:50am for a meeting at 8am. I was the first one there and Dr. McKay the dean of nursing and Roberta who has been a tremendous help throughout the entire process discussed how the project was going so far. When Elizabeth, Debby and Caitlin arrived Dr. McKay discussed what she wanted from them by the 8^th of July, which included their experiences, feedback to improve and any other comments. At 11am we then headed out into San Martin. I went to Tita’s home and she wasn’t able to aid in administering the survey in the beginning part of the day so I walked around by myself. I was not nervous and continued on the street we had began the previous day.

            Today the house that stood out to me was a house with a lady who told me she had paranoid schizophrenia. She was very open with me and told me her story of the abuse she tolerated as a child mainly from her mother. She said her mother used to listen to her sister who was her mom’s favorite. At the age of 15 her mother decided to wed her to a guy she was not in love with because her sister had seen that she was interested in another guy. Because her mother really valued her sisters opinion they married her to a guy who was also in love with her but who she was not in love with at all. She said she did not want it but did not have any where to go and so she married him. She said her husband who is now her ex-husband loved her but she did not love him. She says she would fight with him and they would fist fight and she ran away periodically but would return in the end. Eventually her husband was frustrated with the entire process and would stop fighting with her and try to find out what was wrong. She says she would tell him “I don’t love you” and he would be hurt and leave. During this period she became more depressed and then became pregnant. She says she really was depressed and would start to hallucinate and have an inner voice tell her negative things. Her family thought she was crazy and she said something was wrong but the hospitals here were the worst. She also said no one would diagnose her they only were willing to put her in a mad house but she says she is convinced she had paranoid schizophrenia. As we talked some more she told me she was diagnosed and then had her second child. After her second child was born she started going to church a whole lot more and she credits that with helping her to heal. As she told me her story she would start crying and would tell me I have never told anyone this. I was touched and as I listened to her story I was drawn to tears. We ended up speaking for over 2 hours about her experience and I was touched. Why is there a lack of mental health services in the developing world? Why is there still that stigma?

Things need to change.