Various factors contribute to the astounding percentage of mental illness in a country like Pakistan; the main being frustration, worry, anxiety, tension, and stress. From Dawn to dusk, the unfortunate citizen struggles for existence during adverse environmental and physical conditions.
Because of the erroneous stigma attached to psychiatric or psychological treatment in our society, which unfortunately dubbed those seeking such treatment as ‘mental cases’, coupled with the prohibitive cost of psychiatric treatment for ordinary people, many patients with psychological and mental disorders suffer in silence. The plight of numerous mentally ill patients, languishing in the mental wards of our jails and asylums, who although cured, cannot be released because there is no one to pay the accumulated charges or their relatives cannot be traced.
It is tragic that despite the extremely high incidence of mental illness in Pakistan, no adequate facilities exist for the treatment and rehabilitation of mentally ill patients. The methodology of behavioral psychology is treatment without drugs, by simply using conversational therapy to restore the patient’s shattered self-confidence.
To temporarily eliminate psychosomatic ailments patients, resort to all sorts of drugs which are very dangerous as most of them are highly addictive. If some of these diseases, which could prove fatal, can be eliminated by applying harmless and effective behavioral psychology techniques, nothing like it. Most of the ailments enumerated above emanate from worry. Since worry is one of the biggest problems facing mankind today one would have thought that every high
school and college would impart a course on “How to stop worrying.” The availability of a broad range of treatments has loosened the grip of psychiatrists on the therapy profession. A majority of patients are now seeking non-medical therapists, including psychologists, clinical and psychiatric social workers, and lay counselors. With lower fees, shorter terms of treatment, and more directly supportive methods, psychologists have succeeded in democratizing a profession that was once controlled by elitist psychiatrists.
Behavioral psychology gives health and happiness to tension and frustration-ridden people. As the world-famous psychologist, Dr. Murray Banks has rightly said: ” No one is born happy. You learn to be happy.”
