A Daily Monitor report published Monday has claimed that analysis of records at Butabika, Uganda’s national referral mental health institution, shows a year-to-year spike in the number of patients admitted between November and January.
In cessation, the newspaper says “Ugandans suffer mental illness around Christmas” (day commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ.)
Butabika Hospital authorities have attributed the end-of-year increase in mentally ill patients to excitement and anxiety ahead of the festive season.
“Toward the festive season, men get excited, drink and smoke too much while some others [without means] are stressed about providing for their families in the festive days,” Dr David Basangwa, the executive director of Butabika Hospital is quoted to have said.
This survey by the newspaper corespondent says on average 22,000 patients, more than half of them men, check at Butabika every November, December and January.
Mental conditions listed range from alcohol and or drug abuse to bipolar disorder, depression, dementia, schizophrenia, epilepsy and bipolar among others.
“In other months, slightly fewer patients seek treatment at the national referral hospital, according to its financial year-based data sets for 2013, 2014 and 2015 (ending June 2016).” The report reads in part.
Adding, “Festive season budget overruns on merrymaking resulting in financial hardships when tuition and other school demands knock in late January or early February.”
With frequent high-profile tragedies connected with mental illness, many people, Christians and non-Christians alike are talking about the challenges of mental health.
In 2013, LifeWay Research reported that nearly half of evangelical, fundamentalist, or born-again Christians (48%) believe that people with serious mental illness can overcome their condition through prayer and Bible study alone.
Researchers also found that 54 percent said churches should do more to prevent suicide, and 68 percent said they would feel welcome in church if they were mentally ill.
Former Butabika patient, Abbey Mark Lujja who gained sanity after attending a Church service at Miracle Centre – Rubaga, is one of the most remarkable living testimonies to Christians.
Narrating the ordeal, Abby said he served with the US Army as foreign security personnel during Operation Iraqi Freedom. It is here that he was assaulted homosexually. This kept his health and sanity in a downward spiral which forced him to return to Uganda in 2011.
He has been admitted four times into the Butabika Psychiatric Hospital, but all that medicine failed, Abbey’s mother said.
After their 27-year-old son, Matthew, committed suicide in 2013 after a lengthy battle with depression and mental illness, reknown televangelist and author, Pastor Rick Warren and his wife, Kay, launched a campaign, Saddleback Church’s Gathering on Mental Health conference, to encourage faith communities to take the lead in caring for those with mental illnesses.
“There’s no shame when any other organ in your body fails, so why do we feel shame if our brain is broken?” Warren asked during a 2013 interview with CNN.
“Churches are typically the first organization families in pain reach out to,” he later added. “When a family is having a mental-health crisis, they don’t go first to their lawyer. They don’t go to their accountant. They don’t even go to the police or the doctor or even the principal. Usually, the first person they call is the church.”
editor@ugchristiannews.com
