Prejudice key obstacle to curing mental disease
By Kim Jae-won
A 34-year-old office worker Kim went through an embarrassing experience last month, related to a case of depression dating back to about two decades ago.
Kim, who asked to be identified only by his surname, said that AIA Korea refused to sell to him the company’s healthcare insurance service because he received treatment from a psychiatrist for a minor depression when he was a middle school student.
Kim almost forgot about the incident until the insurance company took issue with this part of his medical history.
“A saleswoman of the insurance company said that I cannot buy its healthcare products because I had a medical record of a mental disease,” said Kim.
Kim’s case is a graphic evidence of the endemic social prejudice and stigma about mental illness here, making people hesitant to consult experts for help.
Employers also often ask jobseekers to submit their medical records, including mental illness, which becomes a basis to avoid hiring people with mental health problems.
“It is common practice of big companies to require medical records of would-be employees. They want to filter out those who have mental diseases,” said Jeong Ju-hee, an official of Job Korea, the nation’s biggest online recruiter.
Due to these stereotypes, only 15.3 percent of people with mental illness said they have consulted psychiatrists or any form of professional help according to a 2011 report on mental illness conducted by Seoul National University (SNU) for the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
The ratio is far below the figure reported in other developed countries, such as the United States, Australia and New Zealand, which reported 39.2 percent, 34.9 percent and 38.9 percent, respectively, the ministry said.
“People hide their mental diseases because they are afraid of facing social prejudice and stigma as well as other disadvantages. To provide more efficient treatment, we need to eliminate prejudice about mental illness,” said the SNU report.
The health ministry said that private insurers and employers have no legal authority to require mental health records because medical information has to be treated as confidential information by law.
“Private insurance companies and employers cannot have access to personal medical information. The medical information is kept in secret by law, and anybody who leaks it can be held legally liable,” said Lee Jung-kyu, a director at the health ministry.
Experts say social prejudice and stigma on mental disorders is one of the reasons behind Korea’s notoriously high suicide rate. It reached 31.7 per 100,000 people in 2011, according to the health ministry, hitting the highest among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries.
Critics say timely and appropriate consultations could save lives of people from killing themselves because more than 80 percent of people who committed in suicides had depression or mental illness problems.
To help those who suffer from mental disorders, experts say that the government needs to make more counseling centers available in local neighborhoods. There are 183 mental healthcare centers in the country, insufficient to serve the mental health needs of the country.