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Educate youth against substance abuse – psychiatrist

Published:Friday | November 8, 2019 | 12:25 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer

WESTERN BUREAU:

Dr Lisabeth Crossman, regional psychiatrist at the Western Regional Health Authority, believes that education needs to play a key role in helping young people in the region to deal with mental-health issues, especially those whose conditions can be traced to substance abuse.

She indicated that the health facilities in the region had been treating a number of young men who have been diagnosed with psychotic conditions. “...We can say anecdotally that about 90 per cent of those young men’s conditions would be due to substance use,” Crossman told The Gleaner.

“There’s a need to educate the wider society, especially our parents and young persons, to understand more about substances and how they affect persons,” added Crossman.

During a recent tour of the Committee for the Upliftment of the Mentally Ill (CUMI) facility, in Montego Bay, Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton noted that reports of mental-health cases in western Jamaica had tripled from 2,000 cases in 2001 to more than 6,000 in 2018.

MENTAL ILLNESS

Crossman noted that young men who use illicit substances run a significant risk of developing mental illnesses.

“Men are probably twice more likely to use substances than women, and they start using substances earlier because they’re introduced to it and they tend to be inquisitive. When there is substance use, there’s a 20 per cent chance that that person can develop a chronic mental illness such as schizophrenia later on in life,” explained Crossman.

“Education should start not only now, but from pre-pregnancy, so we must educate mothers, fathers, and prospective parents. It means our youngsters will have a better chance of making better decisions in the long run,” she added.

The psychiatrist said that while there was no direct correlation between the effects of crime in western Jamaica and mental health cases, she noted that some cases some victims of mental illness exhibit symptoms similar of these of war survivors.

“Any stress or that persons find difficult to cope with can result in mental illness, so we can’t just broadly say that because of crime and violence, persons develop mental illness, but if you look at wars that have gone before, a lot of persons developed mental illness during that time,” said Crossman.