Mental health, from the porfiriato to present-day Mexico

About the celebrations of the bicentennial of Mexico and the premiere of the book "The Castañeda" from the author Cristina Rivera Garza, which tells the story of the General Asylum from the era of the Porfiriato that was sent to the "crazy" people, was inaugurated on September 1, 1910 and worked for 50 years. It's worth stopping to analyze the changes in mental health that we have had in Mexico until now.

Unfortunately, 100 years ago, psychiatry was not yet a highly developed science. They were about the beginnings of this medical specialty in Mexico , that began with his first practices in the pavilions of La Castañeda. The diagnoses of the doctors to the patients were not always accurate, a confrontation between their real suffering and what was then diagnosed.

La Castañeda served as a shelter and shelter for the abandoned, alcoholics, madmen and prostitutes, all with the purpose of cleaning the Porfirian image of the country. In fact, in the same hospital there were incredibly specific divisions for all the inmates, from the poor to the rich and from the dangerous crazy to the prostitutes.

Today it is known and defined according to the document "Mental Health in Mexico", carried out by Dr. Juan Martín Sandoval De Escurdia and Lic. María Paz Richard Muñóz, for the Research and Analysis Service of the Social Policy Division of the LIX Legislature of the Chamber of Deputies: the mental health it is a complex phenomenon determined by multiple social, environmental, biological and psychological factors, and includes conditions such as depression, anxiety, epilepsy, dementia, schizophrenia, and developmental disorders in childhood, some of which have been aggravated in recent times.

 

Social policy and current affairs

In this sense, to ensure that the population maintains mental health, in addition to physical health, depends, in large part, on the successful implementation of public health actions to prevent, treat and rehabilitate.

Another inherent aspect of social policy is that mental health is related as well as physical health, with poverty, where the incidence of these diseases requires from the affected ones a greater proportion of the few income they generate, in addition to the incapacitating which result, which as a consequence diminish or slow down the development potential of people and therefore of family nuclei.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental health is the well-being that a person experiences as a result of their good functioning in the cognitive, affective and behavioral aspects, and, ultimately, the optimal deployment of their individual potentialities for coexistence, work and recreation.

Currently, depression is the frequently overlooked and systematically underdiagnosed disease, although it contributes to significantly undermine the quality of life of older adults. Mild and severe depression increases significantly above 75 years in general, is greater among women, according to the publication "Health and well-being of the elderly in Mexico City", distributed by the Pan American Health Organization in 2005 .

That is why mental health has always been part of the history of our country and of the human being as a whole.


Video Medicine: MEXICO - WikiVidi Documentary (March 2024).