KOTA KINABALU: Psoriases, a chronic skin disease related to the immune system, can cause so much emotional and psychological harm that it drove two female patients in their late teens to suicide in the past five years.
Revealing this yesterday, Maj (R) Eugene Cross, the president of the Psoriasis Association of Malaysia, said the condition caused him to quit his job in the Air Force.
Eugene, who has been free from psoriases for the last 10 years, stresses the importance of joining the association where they would get much-needed support and counselling.
“In our counselling sessions, we have four to five families on the brink of breakup because their spouses did not understand psoriasis, so we counselled them,” he said, adding that membership is free of charge.
Currently the association has around 2,000 members, and Eugene is urging more patients with psoriasis to come onboard and get the support they needed.
For more information, visit psoriasismalaysia.org or contact 03-89484335.
Eugene said he had battled psoriasis for 35 years, and at one point, his condition was so bad that he was physically immobile for 11 months.
“I couldn’t move my limbs, I couldn’t move my hands and torso because when I turned, the lesion was so big that it cracked,” he said at a press conference during the 19th Regional Conference of Dermatology here yesterday.
Psoriasis affects about two to three percent of Malaysians and is a condition that results in localised or extensive inflamed scaly skin lesions that can affect any part of the skin, most frequently the scalp, elbows, knees and shins.
He said the disease is “potentially disabling physically and damaging emotionally”.
“People don’t understand the difference between psoriasis and other contagious diseases; they stay away from you in supermarkets and they don’t sit next to you in bus,” he said.
Meanwhile, Dr Steven KW Chow, senior consultant dermatologist at Pantai Medical Centre and Gleneagles Intan Medical Centre in Kuala Lumpur, said patients with skin diseases not only suffer physically, but also emotionally due to the stigma attached to the diseases.
He said the stigma of chronic diseases like eczema and psoriasis alienates patients from society and places them under great psychological stress.
Chow, who was the organising chairman of the event being held from Oct 20-23 at Magellan Sutera Harbour Resort here, said patients also struggled with their altered physical appearances, constant discomfort and pain caused by their condition.
“Even without the attached stigma, patients are on a constant emotional roller coaster – expressing feelings of anguish, frustration, embarrassment, stress and fear of worsening symptoms,” he said.
“Imagine discomfort so disruptive that it affects sleep, prevents sitting and standing for long periods, walking and performing normal chores. Imagine a shame so great it shuns all form of physical contact, even holding the hand of a loved one,” Chow said.
“These patients are struggling with significant self-esteem and self-image issues, and the stigma society places on them will only cause further withdrawal.”
The president of Psoriasis Philippines, Josef De Guzman, said few studies were done on Asians regarding psoriasis, as most researches were conducted on Western patients.
He added that it was timely for the Asia region to consolidate and be on par with European associations.
Josef said studies in Spain and other European countries found that psoriasis patients were the third most depressed, even more than cancer patients.
“In the United States, up to 10 per cent of psoriasis patients commit suicide.”
Realizing the physical and emotional impact on patients, efforts were being done at WHO to reclassify psoriasis as a chronic disease, as opposed to a cosmetic one, he said.
Dermatologists from all over Asia and beyond attended the conference aimed at developing quality regional teaching opportunities for dermatologists and establishing common standards of clinical practice.
It also serves as a platform to showcase Asian researches in dermatology, as well as to update practitioners on developments on the management on patients.
The 19th RCD incorporates the second annual meeting of the Asian Academy of Dermatology and Venerelogy and the 35th annual meeting of the Dermatological Society of Malaysia.