Denial

#mentalhealthweek2024

#mentalhealthday

One important incident comes into my mind whenever I think of the topic.

Denial in the patient and their relatives  regarding any kind of mental illness.

                                  That day, it was too late for the OPD and I was in a hurry, suddenly while crossing , near Samyak, I saw one young boy, slapping 😮 an old man.

                                With the intention of helping the old man, I drove the car nearer to them, and I found 😲😳 he is our old schizophrenic patient Mr X who is beating his father .                        

                               When I started questioning, his father straightaway denied that Mr X slapped him ( which I had seen with my own eyes 😔) and politely requested me to leave and said that Mr X is perfectly okay, they just came to take the medicines for him as a  follow up purpose, they have already shown to Dr Choudhary and now, leaving.

                                 I had to leave from there 😭 and when I discussed this with doctor Choudhary , he said that his father didn’t complain about  his behavioural problems or aggression in spite of repeatedly asking and just  insisted prescribing the  medicines which are going on , to continue with the treatment.

                          This happens routinely in the OPD.

Sometimes, relatives are scared, sometimes they think that the problem is not that big or they just develop the tolerance to bear the patients’ symptoms 😞.

                            This is called  DENIAL( denying the gravity of the illness) in psychiatry, which is  actually difficult to treat 🤔

                             The same attitude is found in alcoholic’s and drug addict’s relatives too,  with double severity because the addicts are already oversmart and they know very well about how to manipulate everyone.

Dr. Rupali Karwa Choudhary, Psychiatrist
Samyak Rehabilitation Center, Pune