World Mental Health Day is celebrated annually since 1999 in order to bring to the attention of the community the importance of maintaining good mental health in our daily lives.

World Mental Health Day also has as one of its objectives, the early recognition, detection and treatment of mental illness. For 2007, the theme chosen is “Mental Health in a Changing World ; The Impact of Culture and Diversity”. This theme hopes to focus on several main aspects of mental health and illness viz.

1.     Sociocultural factors influence the psychosocial development of each individual person so that norms of behavior and values would vary with different individuals.  What is normal value or normal behavior in one cultural group may not be considered normal value or behavior in another. Similarly what is stressful in one culture may not be stressful at all in another culture.

2.     Sociocultural factors also influence how people label and communicate both physical and mental distress, how they explain the cause of their mental health problems, where they seek help as well as their response to the treatment given.  Because of these, it is important for the healthcare worker to understand each patient in the context of his/her sociocultural background in order to be able to provide the quality mental health care patient needs.

3.     International migration from one country to another is very high. The psychosocial stresses resulting from migration increase the likelihood of jeopardizing one’s mental health, indicating a need for some kind of  support system which can help the immigrant to integrate with the host culture.

4.     Even within each country, intranational rural-urban migration and rapid sociocultural change creates stress which can jeopardize the mental health of the individual. Changing social values may also contribute to stresses experienced by individuals within that culture.

The maintenance of good mental health requires an active effort on the part of every individual and is not merely a passive absence of mental illness.  Good mental health  is as important as good physical health, if not more so.

Mental Health  Service in Brunei Darussalam is as good as other countries in the region and the latest effective drugs are available at almost no cost to the patient.  Early recognition of the mentally ill individual will lead to early treatment and offers the best chance of complete recovery.

World Mental Health Day is really a call to all sectors in the community to work together in order to maintain good mental health of the population.

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Date: 10th October 2007