Silent stories of mental pain and survival cries / Nur Zafifa Kamarunzaman

Health without mental health is nothing. The famous statement from the World Health Organization (WHO) coined it right, but how much it could be endured by many? Mental health issues are intangible and hardly visible as physical ailments. According to WHO (2010a), mental health has become an emerging issue in developed and developing countries. For example, depression has been ranked among the top global burden contributing to disability. Pathology is expected to be the second most common cause of disability, and it will be placed at the head of the charts by the year 2030. A similar trend is expected in Malaysia as the country faces a gradual increase in the pathology statistics of depression. Records show the presence of psychiatric morbidity of 10.7 percent in 1997; depression alone was recorded at 2.6 percent in 2002; with 40.9 percent of patients being Indians. Meanwhile, suicidal ideation among young people has emerged to be the highest in 2007, with overall morbidity of 9 percent in 2011 (Abdul Kadir, 2011). In more recent statistics, the Health Morbidity and Mortality survey stated that the prevalence of mental health problems among adults in Malaysia has increased by almost three folds compared to the previous report collected in 2008 (Institute for Public Health, 2015).