Kudos to fellow blogger Tony Ramos for raising awareness on the dearth of help and services for people with mental conditions and disabilities in this country. This follows the recent fracas involving a blogger group, a member of which described a known personality with autism as “walang kwenta.” Another recent issue is the reported proliferation of fake PWD IDs; then came a Facebook post quoting a notice that some mental illnesses do not qualify as disabilities. Much debate rages, but people with disabilities and mental illnesses remain on the losing end of it.
I’m joining this blogging bandwagon on mental illness as I have a nephew with autism and other relatives with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. I myself also suspect that I have ADHD, though I have yet to get an official diagnosis. But through others, I know the stigma that is associated with mental illness and the difficulties for even just survival faced by people with such conditions in this country.
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I actually started writing this article after the discovery in the aftermath of Typhoon Yolanda of mentally disabled people locked in cages or chained to objects and abandoned by their families during the typhoon’s onslaught. I have heard that this was common treatment of people with mentally ill in older days. Another is a recent case of a man with autism in Capiz whose hands were cut off when he was mistaken for an intruder (that one drew tears from me). Yet all this is not surprising: they only reflect the culture of the country.
A co-worker years ago (2000-2002) told me of a time she visited a government office. While waiting, she noticed that one of the employees, who was before then quietly seated, dressed in uniform and ID, suddenly stood up and played as if he was shooting people around him with his hand. Another employee nearby, an older lady, said something like, “Iho! Behave yourself!” So he stopped and again sat down quietly. The apparent conclusion is that the employee had a mental condition, maybe autism, and was just given a government office post so that he could still make money. I’m not really against that now, to be honest. But it also further highlights the inadequacy of care for people with mental illness in the Philippines.
It’s the Culture, As Always
As GRP’s main position has always been, it all originates from culture. In a primitive-minded third world country, where survival remains highest in the hierarchy of needs, the mentally ill are seen as burdens, or even as “undesirables.” Some people will not be not afraid to say that the mentally ill are best rid of. It is also sad that having such a person in your family or company is considered an embarrassment, which connects to another problem GRP has always been criticizing in Filipino culture, our fixation on pride.
Because of these, mental illness tends to be underdiagnosed in the Philippins, with some people hiding the fact of themselves or their relatives having such conditions. Contributing to this is poor knowledge of mental illnesses. Most Filipinos do not understand how to handle people with mental illness and tend to react violently or in an alarmed manner towards them. Caring for seriously mentally disabled people is indeed harder work than usual, especially for one who knows little to nothing of others’ mental conditions.
I have also heard people say caregivers of people with mental illnesses suffer more. The premise is that the mentally ill are luckier because, if they get caregivers, they have things easier. I would take the opposite view, as many mentally disabled people actually do not get caregivers. Those with serious mental conditions are also unable to deal with life by themselves.
The lack of resources and professionals is another aspect of the problem. Mental health professionals are few in the country and their ranks are probably stretched thin handling numerous patients. Both government and private institutions do not provide substantial funding and don’t seem to give adequate priority to addressing mental health issues.
The Deinstitutionalization Issue
I do understand that it is not unique to the Philippines. Even advanced countries have care gaps regarding their mentally disabled residents. The United States had this controversy where the government during the 20th century closed many state-run mental health facilities, and event called deinstitutionalization. It was hailed by some as a move which saved the government money. But criticisms of this action said patients had no assurance of a place to go after release. Families can simply refuse to take back their relatives, or in other cases, no family could be found (it’s possible a whole family died and their mentally ill relative was the only one left). Some former patients became homeless. While community-based mental care became the focus, the communities themselves may have lacked funding.
In this country, you may have seen dirty vagrants on the streets, which we call “taong grasa” (grease people), and mentally ill people wandering the streets referred to as “sinto-sinto.” The presence of these could be considered an indicator of the prevalence of mental illness. In line with this, I support calls for state-supported or big business-supported facilities for mental health, because families themselves cannot take it up. Some people might say, asylums and wards were cruel back then, but that is because knowledge about mental illness was in the stone age. There have been recent calls to reintroduce more humane asylums, and perhaps we need them now more than we ever did.
Misconceptions on Intelligence and Mental illness
Lack of proper knowledge of mental illness and health leads to the prevalence of misconceptions in our society. These contribute to mistreatment of mentally ill or disabled people:
1. One with mental illness cannot be intelligent – Many people who are intelligent do suffer from mental illness. One things I explained before is that expectations are high for intelligent people to make money. If they are unable to meet such expectations, those with the expectations bully and put the people down. It can lead to depression. The fact is that intelligence does not automatically lead to money and intelligent people become victims of others’ greed. Geniuses like Nikola Tesla have died in poverty.
2. One mental illness has a “special talent” – This is the opposite of number one. “Special talent” does not correlate to mental condition. This misconception was propagated by the movie “Rain Man,” wherein Dustin Hoffman’s autistic character showed some advanced mathematical ability. In real life, however, the autistic savant is rare and many people with autism do not have special talents. It cannot be expected of them. Unfortunately, it led to many relatives and parents assuming their autistic child would have a special talent, setting themselves up for disappointment when they learn the truth.
3. Mental illness can be cured without any professional treatment – Probably because of tales or anecdotes of miracles of people getting well by themselves, one day just appearing normal all of a sudden. However, such tales may actually be “fake news,” concocted tales like what you find on the Internet, or fiction that is mistaken for fact. Many Filipinos after watch fictional TV shows showing such a story and tend to assume that they’re real.
4. Poor people don’t suffer mental illness – This is false as I personally know several cases of people who have suffered from mental conditions like severe depression and disabilities like Down Syndrome in the informal settler areas. In fact, living in such conditions increases the risk of mental illness.
5. The mentally ill are all dangerous – This is one of the worst of the misconceptions that directly contributes to mistreatment of people with mental illness and disabilities. Movies sometimes portray a character who became a criminal because of mental illness (like in Batman). This makes people believe that one can do only heinous acts because of a mentally ill or deranged condition. This is wrong, and many people who commit atrocities are, for lack of a better term, mostly sane (I’ll mention communists as the best example, of course!). Many people with mental conditions are too disabled to even have a concept of crime.
Related to this is when mental illness is actually diagnosed in criminals. In light of what I wrote before on the Insanity Defense, while some people may commit some crimes or acts that need them to be sanctioned or addressed, it does not preclude the need for proper mental health care. Even the justice system in the Philippines is affected by the lack or proper understanding of mental illness.
What next for Mental Health Reform
Fellow blogger Tony has written about steps underway in the Senate to get some legislation passed for mental illness measures. Yet I still hold that if culture is where the problem starts, it’s in culture where the solution should be introduced. As I explained above, mass media is itself guilty or perpetuating misconceptions about mental illness. It seems most Filipinos’ views of mental illness remain at the level of Richard Gomez’ portrayal in “Tuklaw,” Tonton Gutierrez’s character in “Saan Nagtatago ang Pag-ibig,” and Gerald Anderson in “Ako Budoy.” My suggestion is that our media companies produce more informational material on mental conditions to be presented by the likes of Kim Atienza and such.
While I have criticized the idea of dole-outs to people who are able to work, I do support benefits and assistance for those with serious mental conditions. GRP stalwart Ben Kritz wrote about increased support for the elderly in his column years ago, and this can include those with mental conditions as well. Mental illness is where I am more accepting of measures that may be labeled “socialism.” While laws have been passed under both the BS Aquino and Duterte administrations to increase benefits for people with disabilities, measures centered on those with mental illness probably need more than law.
Our esteemed webmaster Benign0 wrote in his recent Substack article, “the path to setting down sound economic fundamentals and building a great nation is not complicated.” For me, this should include having at least decent measures in addressing mental health, because the capacity to support and handle mentally ill properly is a true sign of progress. People saying, that idea that societies progress because they get rid of their useless members is a big fat lie. Capacity to support and feed even the “useless” people is not only a good moral standard, but also a prosperity standard.
- On Mental Health Services Reform in the Philippines - October 30, 2026
- Why The World Best Remain “Disunited” and Why Multiculturalism Fails - October 25, 2026
- Why Pride is a Bad Reaction to Oppression - June 18, 2026