Close to 10% of the nation’s population can be classified as having disabilities, and while their disability in itself often poses more than a challenge to them a new study reveals just how prevalent symptoms of anxiety and depression are in this specific demographic.
Symptoms of depression and anxiety amongst persons with disabilities in Bangladesh stands at 73.8% and 62.6%, respectively according to a study conducted by icddr,b and the Centre for Disability in Development (CDD), which further elucidates that women are 3.21 times more likely to suffer from depressive symptoms when compared to men.
Mental illness is, unfortunately, still a topic that is surrounded by a lot of stigma in our society -- where even the able bodied have to think twice before discussing the state of their mental health with those closest to them. Not being able to offer mental health services to those with disabilities, then, is a failure on two ends.
As a country that harbours aspirations to become a middle-income economy within the next few decades, it makes little to no sense for us to continuously fail the most marginalized segments of our population -- disability is far down in our national agenda, as we are dealing with many other seemingly larger problems, but this is an attitude that we will need to shed just as we do so to our LDC status.
For too long have we paid next to no heed to the needs and wants of people with disabilities while simultaneously not giving mental health the importance it deserves. It is high time we rectified that. While the ongoing work by advocacy groups and NGOs to spread awareness on such issues has been more than welcome, at one point the government will need to step in.
Our mental health workforce needs to be bolstered with adequate training, the percentage of which currently is incredibly low, while the number of psychiatric experts needs to be much higher than what it is -- these are infrastructural bottlenecks which can only be removed through policy support.
At the end of the day, we all need help -- regardless of our position in society.
