Plus, even rationally it doesn’t make sense. Even if it is shameful to have a mental disorder, pretending you don’t have it will most likely make it worse (and hence more shameful) than if you accepted it and got treatment.
If we are talking about ex-USSR, the very popular among ignorami there idea of mental disorders is that these are not genetic like albinism, but something infectious like HIV, or a conspiracy by psychiatrists, or some other crap.
It’s stigma combined with fear. Well, and also the fact that in USSR only people with really debilitating conditions, like schizophrenia in full cognitive decline stage, would be hospitalized, and usually forcibly. And, of course, another category of patients - political dissidents diagnosed with a specifically invented type of schizophrenia to lock them up.
Plus, even rationally it doesn’t make sense. Even if it is shameful to have a mental disorder, pretending you don’t have it will most likely make it worse (and hence more shameful) than if you accepted it and got treatment.
If we are talking about ex-USSR, the very popular among ignorami there idea of mental disorders is that these are not genetic like albinism, but something infectious like HIV, or a conspiracy by psychiatrists, or some other crap.
It’s stigma combined with fear. Well, and also the fact that in USSR only people with really debilitating conditions, like schizophrenia in full cognitive decline stage, would be hospitalized, and usually forcibly. And, of course, another category of patients - political dissidents diagnosed with a specifically invented type of schizophrenia to lock them up.