Comments on: Why am I not surprised?

By: Charles Abela

Charles Abela — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 09:44:18 +0000

@ andrea

:-)

By: jim

jim — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:55:45 +0000

The number is not to be taken literally, I guess. He checked the European statistics and applied it to Malta. It’s one of the figures they teach at university. Also, mental health has a broad meaning and includes all types of disorders.

By: Andrea

Andrea — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:28:32 +0000

@Charles Abela,

You are offering pretty much junk-food for thought. Indigestible.

By: Manuel

Manuel — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:32:02 +0000

Mr. Abela,

There is only on piece of evidence possibly indicating that mental health problems have increased over the last 6 years or so i.e. since the first boat people started to arrive – the fact that Mr. Lowell bagged 1600 votes in the last MEP elections…….

By: Charles Abela

Charles Abela — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:41:29 +0000

The observations on mental health could benefit I think from the research of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Russian psychologist. He undertook a very simple experiment: he locked a defined number of mice in a defined space… food & drink was ample and regularly distributed, it was augmented as the number of mice increased but space was left as it was. He started noticing a pattern of disruptions in ‘social’ behaviour: abortion, cannibalism especially of the newly-born and clawing at their own skins.

Perhaps this points to another consequence: wars. They tend to stem from the fear of ‘lack of space’ a fact aggravated by the rush to ‘big cities’.

I was told by an ex-British Wren who was posted in Malta during the last war that it was actually this ‘lack of space’ that made the psychological suffering terrible.

Is the current unconscious collective fear of the ever increasing numbers of foreigners working on the island, plus illegal immigration, a cause of the fear of encroachment on our limited space? I am not drawing any conclusions – just food for thought.

By: Reuben Scicluna

Reuben Scicluna — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:51:15 +0000

[Daphne – Yes, I agree with you about these pathetic press conferences. This is politics at a village level. The last time I saw politicians behaving with this kind of petty need for attention, I was in a hilltop village in central Sicily, where the various personnel at the mayoral office scored points off each other.]

… which goes to illustrate the point that politics generally interest petty-minded people. The unveiling of the plaque is a real giveaway, IMO. He should have taken a felt-tip pen and scribbled “The PS woz here” on the wall …

By: George

George — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:24:58 +0000

Hope that these statistics do not include those Maltese pseudo-patients feigning illness who have either been boarded out or are aspiring to be boarded out from work while at the same time continuing with their full/part time activities, for very often these people claim to be suffering from some form of mental illness. If one were to inquire about these pseudo patients, to prove their point they are all able to produce long epistles written by consultant psychiatrists while at the same time any non-professional person can vouch that these people do not suffer from any ailment at all but are only abusing the welfare system and at the same time draining the country’s coffers.

By: Harry Purdie

Harry Purdie — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:15:57 +0000

WOW! What a market for shrinks. How does this guy define ‘mental health problems’?

By: Xaghra

Xaghra — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:40:29 +0000

I tell you what is poor taste – the pathetic Press Conference at the inauguration of the room with four pieces of gym equipment (as opposed to a ‘gym’) during which I presume Mario Galea made this ‘revelation’. We had everyone huddled together in their fur coats (perhaps no A/C in the modern ‘gym’) listening to Mario Galea’s speech and unveiling of a plaque ‘ta l’okkazjoni’. At some point in the ‘news’ coverage they mentioned that the gym cost €4,000. Wow! We need a press conference and plaque for that!