Sharing feelings important for mental health

Sharing feelings important for mental health

By Santi W.E. Soekanto

JAKARTA (JP): Which habit is better for your mental health:
bottling up your feelings, especially anger, in order not to
upset other people (as many Indonesians tend to do), or venting
them?

The question may seem basic, but the answer, unfortunately, is
not so easy to find. People say, "Oh, don't keep them all inside,
spit them out or you'll have an ulcer", which perhaps contains a
grain of truth.

At least it is true for Alia (not real name), a 20-year old
woman, who was once diagnosed as "depressed" and disturbed enough
to warrant hospitalization.

The young woman said she realizes now that her "illness" was
the result of long-repressed emotions, especially sadness and
anger after being told by her mother that the man she called Papa
was not her biological father.

"I was 14 when she told me that my real father was killed in
an accident before I was born, and that she almost committed
suicide because of it," she said.

"I should have just screamed, cried, anything, instead of just
sitting there, trying to comfort my mother who was already
depressed because she had to bring the bad tidings. I was so
afraid that I would upset her further that I chose to be quiet
and act 'mature'" Alia said.

"Even after that I went on behaving like a 'normal' child and
teenager. But, I exploded years later," she said, describing the
depression she experienced following stressful high school exams.

After a period of hospitalization and a number of alternative
healing methods, Alia recovered. But she often wonders now, "what
drove me over the edge? What caused me to slip into the abyss?"

Even for mental health experts, Alia's questions were not easy
to answer. In addition to dealing with the mystery of mental
illness, both experts and health authorities have to contend with
the problem of the ever-rising number of mentally ill patients in
the country.

Magnitude

Despite society's incomprehension of mental illness, the
magnitude of the problem makes it serious enough for President
Soeharto to call for more humane treatment of the mentally ill.

Three of 10 Indonesians seeking treatment at public health
centers (Puskesmas) and have symptoms of mental disorders,
Soeharto said last year. "Those people should be loved and
respected," he added.

According to Ministry of Health statistics, 1.4 per 1,000
people in urban areas and 4.6 per 1,000 people in rural areas
suffer from psychosis - any form of severe mental disorder in
which the individual's contact with reality becomes highly
distorted - while 98 people out of 1,000 have problems such as
drug abuse and alcoholism. The Indonesian population currently
stands at around 185 million.

The World Health Organization painted an even bleaker picture
when it reported last year that two to three of 1,000 people in
the world suffer from mental illness. It also said that six to
eight out of 1,000 suffer from mental illnesses, including
emotional, neurological and psychosocial disorders.

An annual increase of 20 percent in the number of mentally ill
occurs in Jakarta alone, according to officials. With the rapid
social, cultural and political changes that the nation is
experiencing, the handling of the problem of mental illness may
continue to gain importance.

Ignorance on the part of the people around the mentally
disturbed often results in inhumane treatment. Many Indonesians,
especially in provincial areas, neglect the mentally ill by
isolating them in wooden shackles and placing their legs in
stocks.

Alia, too, though she lives in Jakarta, received rough
treatment at the hands of hospital orderlies.

"They clenched me, pressed me down on the bed, pulled down my
pants and just jammed me with a needle to sedate me when all I
had been doing was crying incessantly," she said, holding back
tears. "I wasn't behaving violently, but they treated me as if I
were some kind of crazy animal."

Oration

One of the experts who continues to be preoccupied with the
problem of mental health is Dr. Suprapti Sumarmo Markam, a senior
clinical psychologist from the School of Psychology, University
of Indonesia.

Suprapti chose "the experience of emotions and mental health"
as the topic for her scientific oration which she delivered last
Tuesday on the occasion of her installment as the school's
professor, and strove to reveal scientific answers.

Suprapti, daughter of Slamet Iman Santoso, one of Indonesia's
most prominent scholars and founder of the School of Psychology
at the university, finds a number of reasons why bottling up or
venting emotions are not ideal.

The newly-elected dean of the school also said that
suppressing feelings for fear of offending people may lead to
feelings of isolation and alienation. Shared emotions are more
healing as they usually bring a feeling of well-being, she said.

Definition

But what is mental health? How can you tell that a person is
mentally healthy?

The World Health Organization defined in 1946 that "health is
a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and
not merely the absence of disease or infirmity".

The term mental health represents a variety of human
aspirations: rehabilitation of the mentally disturbed, prevention
of mental disorders, reduction of tension in a conflict-laden
world, and attainment of a state of well-being in which the
individual functions at a level consistent with his mental and
physical potential.

"Here, health means a condition of 'high-level wellbeing'
supported by education, optimum growth and self actualization,"
Suprapti said.

A person is emotionally healthy when he can balance the
onslaught of negative feelings, such as sadness or anger, with
positive ones, such as the feeling of happiness. The person
should also be able to accept and cope with emotional swings, has
the ability to enjoy the positive occurrences of life, and to
survive the bad times. He is generally able to "control" his
emotions.

What differentiates a "normal" person from a person whose
ability to experience and "regulate" emotions is disturbed is
their judgment. Normal people display "adequate adjustments" to
their surroundings, she said.

Suprapti quoted a study in which subjects were asked to
"suppress" feelings which emerged while they were watching
certain movies. For comparison, another group of subjects, on the
other hand, were allowed to experience and express their feelings
of sadness or happiness.

It was found that subjects who suppressed their feelings
showed a decline in somatic (bodily) activities and an increase
in certain brain activities. The two reactions have been
associated with ill health.

"The act of suppressing emotions is indeed correlated with a
person's ill health," she said.

Suprapti added that a person can suppress feelings and yet
remain comfortable, while another person inhibits emotion and
experiences discomfort.

"The expression of emotion is healthy when the individual does
not have conflicts over it," she said. "When you want to share
and express your feelings but are unable to do so, that's when
you're unhealthy."

The ideal choice would then be to become a mature person who
is able to reflect on the feelings that they experience, control
emotions when necessary, share them appropriately, and able to
respect and accept other people as they are, she said.

"And families still have the greater responsibility to raise
those mature, mentally healthy, individuals," Suprapti said.