HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept
{
"id": 1157444,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1157444/?format=api",
"text_counter": 192,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Wetangula",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 210,
"legal_name": "Moses Masika Wetangula",
"slug": "moses-wetangula"
},
"content": "When you see a mother or father turn against their own offspring, that is a mental problem. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, we have speeding motorists. I have said many times, for the last couple of years, that we should introduce mental checkup as part of the driver’s tests, especially those who drive public vehicles on public roads. Mr Temporary Speaker, Sir, how do you explain somebody driving a bus with 60 passengers and driving it in such a reckless and uncaring manner into a ravine and killing everybody including himself. That is a mental patient. However, we do not quite appreciate it. In the villages, a person with a mental problem is characterized as a person who walks naked, one who shouts in a market and is violent. There are so many manifestations of mental health. Therefore, we need to have proper attention to training of mental health personnel at certificate, diploma, degree and post-graduate levels, so that we help the society. Some of the leaders who occupy big public offices of responsibility and make reckless inexplicable and bizarre decisions are mental patients. However, because they are not tested, they find their way through elections and sometimes through appointments. This is because when a person applies for a job as a Principal Secretary, there is no provision that they must produce a mental fitness certificate. Therefore, we have all manner of characters, who are well connected politically with mental problems occupying very high offices. They mistreat everybody who comes their way and we think that they have a bad character, yet they are mental patients. We need to deal with these issues because they are many of them in whatever level. Even in these Houses of Parliament, I see elected people behaving in a very bizarre manner. They behave as if they carry nobody’s responsibility, yet they are elected to carry the responsibility of the people who elected them. Those are mental patients. Therefore, we need to address all these things, so that we can improve our society and make things work. In developed societies, and Kenya is rapidly getting there, people volunteer to go for mental check ups. However, here, if you tell somebody who is visibly mad that they should go for psychiatric tests and check up, they will turn on you because they are so mad and they do not believe they are. This is the norm; people live that way. There are fistfights and abuses everywhere and so on. I, therefore, salute Sen. Kasanga. Again, we need the Executive to take this matter very seriously. Look at the chaos that we see in the management of our public transport system. Everywhere you go, there is very unhealthy competition. People shout themselves hoarse and everybody is angry with everybody. Everybody is in a state of rage and stupor. These are mental problems, but we do not see this because we have not lived to a level where we start appreciating that the manner in which these people behave is not consistent with expected human behaviour. Mr Temporary Speaker, Sir, we are recruiting young people to the police and the army. You just hear that they quarrelled over a girlfriend and one shot the other and the woman as well. That is a mental patient. I do not think there is any woman who will be so devastating in attraction to a man; that because he is talking to another man, you take a gun and shoot him. Those are mental patients."
}