MENTAL HEALTH BASICS
By: Dr Edwin Muinga MbChB, Mmed (Psych) HSC

ABOUT THE BOOK

DEAR READER, welcome and walk with me over some baseline discussion on mental health. KINDLY note that this is just an introduction of mental health concepts tailored basically for para- medicals and any one who has not done psychiatry as a major subject in the university or college. There will be many gaps left and the more informed reader may wish to look elsewhere. However I feel that the book will fill a certain gap in mental health knowledge and hopefully contribute to better understanding and management of the same. This information is ideal to the primary health care giver, and his or her client and relatives.
I have tried to go to basics in brain anatomy , and neuro- chemistry as well as developmental theory. It is my hope that you will find the book useful and may be motivate you to read further in these areas. For the lay reader, you might find some sections too involving and you may ignore them and go straight to more readable sections. You will still gather enough to understand mental health and management.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defined human health in its broader sense in its 1948 constitution as, “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity
Mental health I must say is least understood even amongst medics. A lot of it is associated with other “forces” and superstitions to the effect that treatable conditions are never presented to a therapist in time. I hope that this information will inform you that mental health disorders have physical and chemical causes and therefore they are amenable to therapy and a person can be rehabilitated completely and go on with normal life. Some causes indeed just happen as in environmental pollution or genetic transmission or trauma following Road Traffic accidents and head injury. However most of the mental health challenges can be prevented. A mother who attends antenatal care and gets all immunizations, indeed protects her unborn child from a myriad of complications after delivery. Similarly a young person who resists indulgence in drugs of addiction will save his life!
It is therefore my hope that everyone will find some relevant information in this book and that lives will be saved and or spared the agony of self inflicted mental health challenges! I hope the medic and para-medic will find it useful in understanding and management of mental health conditions at the primary health care level in rural settings and peri- urban areas.
And I hope the teacher, religious leader and student in our schools and colleges will indeed arm themselves with facts to share with young vulnerable minds in our institutions and and help them to say, NO to drugs of addiction without feeling ashamed when under peer pressure !
I personally like to think of our world as a big clock that goes to precision when all other factors are constant. These factors can be loosely be aggregated under the amorphous but all inclusive term, ENVIRONMENT ! Any factors that derail this clock referred elsewhere as the diurnal rhythm, resultsin dis-ease of one kind or another. On critical look at the world and indeed universe, it is quick clear that there is specific harmony between planets, stars, and the animal and plant kingdom! And for these harmony, planets and stars never collide for once while moving in their own orbits and rotating in their axis! It is this harmony that allows life on earth. Climate is maintained and seasons are predictable and so humans, animals and plants can adjust accordingly and thereby maintain their species survival! However in climate change due to carbon emissions resulting in global warming, this scenario is under serious threat and by extension life on earth is at climatic cross road!
Back to the mental hygiene, there is a part of the brain, the limbic system,that has been identified as playing a major role in regulating the diurnal rhythm and by extension regulating mental health status of an individual.
The diurnal or circadian rhythm forms back bone of understanding mental function and dysfunction that is di-ease. Indeed most drugs used to manage mental illness primarily act on neurotransmitters found in the limbic system of the brain. In simple terms we can equate the diurnal rhythm to a clock that malfunctions in a mental disorder and needs re- setting either through drugs or psychotherapy or even behavior therapy! A psychiatrist and other mental health workers are trained to finding ways of re- setting this clock in search of cure or management of the condition in question!
A flow chart is attached here that helps explains the intricate nervous and hormonal interconnections with the environment and subsequent behavioral or psychiatric manifestations in the individual.