HEALTHWISE
Recently, I conducted a public health survey among students of different universities in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. According to the data obtained, 62.5 percent of the respondents revealed that they experience stress due to their outward appearance and 44.5 percent of them said that this stress affects their physical health, mood, daily activities, and interaction with people. From this result, and from a thorough analysis of various research papers which suggest that people with physical illnesses are more likely to acquire mental health issues and vice versa, one can conclude that there is definitely some sort of association, or an ‘interface’, between physical and mental health.
Consequently, if we establish, and then target the interface of physical and mental health, we can definitely achieve more success in patient care than by developing healthcare services on either one of these aspects alone.
Presently, efforts are underway to bring mental health at par with physical health and ensure both in an individual. One important breakthrough in this regard is the growing scope of ‘liaison psychiatry’, where mental health services are provided to patients hospitalized with physical health problems. My professor of medicine remarked that “a doctor who treats a patient politely and with empathy has already cured half of the latter’s illness”. So, undeniably, emotional support has a crucial role in the overall success of the treatment for an ailment. Therefore, with liaison psychiatry gradually replacing the conventional way of administering only physical treatment for a disease or injury, we can expect a positive outcome.
A second approach of targeting the interface is by making physical activity a habit. According to the research paper “Physical activity and mental health: the association between exercise and mood”, physical activity is a significant public health intervention that is utilized in the prevention and treatment of many physical ailments as well as the management of some psychiatric conditions, like anxiety and depressive disorders. There are proven benefits of physical activity on both mental and physical health, and it can be acted upon by all people contrary to liaison psychiatry which only befits the profession of doctors and other healthcare providers.
The mind and the body have long been seen as separate when planning health services. Moreover, mental health still remains largely overlooked, especially in the far-flung societies of developing countries like Pakistan. Hence, it is no surprise that currently the doctors and nurses are not adequately trained to cater to the emotional needs of the patients. As a result, the patients don’t expect any psychiatric help from them. Furthermore, approaching a psychiatrist with a mental health disease is something that is considered against the social norms. In such a situation, making use of liaison psychiatry becomes essential, so that the patient gets a cure for both, physical and mental illness, in the same hospital setting, at the same time.
Besides, a patient overload is witnessed in the public hospitals in Pakistan, where each doctor is supposed to attend to over 100 patients in the five hours of OPD (outpatient department) timings. Asking a patient to queue up to get his physical ailment checked and then wait in another queue for emotional support will certainly result in him avoiding the latter. Here again, if the same doctor who addresses the physical complaint of a patient is trained in basic psychiatry, he can also provide emotional support and counselling to that patient there and then.
Keeping this in view, a holistic approach to medicine is becoming a practice in medical schools in the developed countries, where general medicine is being integrated with psychiatry. Hopefully, it won’t be long before Pakistani medical universities also follow suit.
As for the general public, the power of the media needs to be utilized, first to stress the fact that mental health is as important as physical health and secondly to convince them – men and women – to include physical activity, aerobics, and cardio, in their daily routines.
Only by dispelling the notion that health means just physical health and by giving training to medical students in psychiatry and their core subjects alike, we can cherish the concept of being able to target the interface of physical and mental health rather than treating either component of overall health separately.
