What are the difference between seeking help for physical health and mental health? Or is there an actual difference between the two?

Time and time again we often hear that it is a lot harder and complicated to seek help for your mental health than it is for your physical health. To an extent this might be true but let’s break it down together shall we.

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As you can see, there’s not actually much difference to seeking help for the two. So why is it harder for people to seek help for mental health?

There are a few reasons to why people find it harder to seek help for mental health in Indonesia. There is a lot of misunderstandings and lack of education when it comes to mental health. We are seeing more and more awareness lately, which is extremely exciting!

Though one of the biggest hurdles that might need some time to break is the stigma that mental health hold; there’s this personal guilt or fault when people realise that something is going wrong with their mental health. There is usually a huge denial when it comes to mental health conditions, whether is you denying it or the people around you such as your family or friends.

It is always better safe than sorry. When things feel out of place and not right, it is alright to seek help. I mean, we’ll start to get concerned if a cough is not going away after a month, then we too should be concerned if we’ve been feeling low more than usual. Understand that your physical health is just as important as mental health.

Now with that being said, we do also understand that there are other factors that do halt people in seeking help for their mental health in Indonesia. For example, there are a limited number of psychologists and psychiatrists. In 2014, WHO reported that Indonesia has a low psychiatrist to population ratio with 0.01 psychiatrist per 100,000 people. Data from the Indonesian Ministry of Health further emphasised that there are only 600-800 psychiatrists for the whole of Indonesia. This means that if every single person that needs treatment gets assigned to at least one psychiatrist, one psychiatrist might have to take care of 300,000-400,000 patients. Wild right?

So to make it a little easier, the Ministry of Health in Indonesia has developed a database where you are able to search for mental health facilities and care based on your location.

Head on to this website to check which is the closest place you can find help.

More online services are also available whether from Indonesian organisations or foreign organisations.

Learn more about seeking help at Seribu Tujuan

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