By Darcel Choy Saturday, October 17 2009

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David Murphy...

Principal at the School of Psychiatry at St Ann’s Hospital David Murphy believes the society is becoming a volatile one.

He made the point yesterday at the North Central Regional Health Association (NCRHA) to commemorate Mental Health Week, at Amphitheater C, Eric Williams Medical Complex, Mt Hope.

“It is because there are so many stresses now even in a time when there is still plenty, and perhaps it takes us back to those days of parenting when something went wrong. And now we are reaping, just those seeds that we sowed so what we have in terms of the criminal activity in our society today can be traced back to those days of either poor parenting, or no parenting at all,” he explained.

Murphy said if focus was put on the type of crime and criminal activities it would show that, what affects the individual affects the family. “What affects the family, affects the community and by extension affects the country. The home is really a substance of society, what the home is, the society will be,” he said. Murphy revealed there was no health without mental health.

“A state of complete physical mental and social well being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity,” Murphy said.

He also revealed that most people knew more about mental illness than mental health. He explained that mental health was vital to the individual, vital to the family, and vital to society.

Murphy also said the continuation of care to people with mental illness was important.

“We should not leave or abandon the mentally ill, we must do our part to ensure the continuation of care,” he said. He also called for more support to be given to children of parents with mental disorders.

“Who takes care of them; they have to work and play like all of us, and then that like HIV/AIDS there is stigma and discrimination,” he said.