Mental health is unfortunately not something that is often brought up naturally amidst conversations in our society. It is perhaps, too disturbing, too uncomfortable; it requires much more effort than the average person is willing to put in.
However, recent political and social events have managed to put the spotlight on this issue and have brought it up in daily conversations. These conversations, that could have been an excellent opportunity to finally raise awareness about mental illnesses and how they should be treated instead just highlighted all shortcomings in our perception of these issues. This article is not specific to any one recent political or social tragedy but is instead meant to provide people with a new perspective for any conversation about mental health that they may engage in.

With Sushant Singh Rajput’s suicide, Social Media was filled with people asking each other what could have to lead him to this. We told each other to talk to friends if they felt the same way, we questioned how someone with such a good life could have taken his own life like this. We went as far as whipping up conspiracy theories and pinning the blame on his girlfriend. In short, we managed to reach every conclusion apart from the one staring us in our face, that he was struggling with his mental health and maybe could not get the necessary help in time.

You cannot get over your mental illness by “Just Talking To a Friend”, your friend is not a qualified mental health professional, they may comfort you, they may give you guidance, but in the end, the fact stands that they do not have the necessary experience and skills to properly help you. At best your friend can encourage you to seek therapy and at worst they would belittle the issue you are facing and make you feel as if your illness is something to be ashamed of or perhaps even worse, is something that you are faking for attention.

In our society, mental illnesses are treated as something ‘new’, something that according to some people, did not even exist a few decades ago. These people, who are usually on the elder side of the age spectrum think of mental issues as a new fad developed by recent generations to be ‘lazy’ and to get out of hard situations. This is ignorance. Mental illnesses aren’t new, they’ve always been an issue. Just because they went undiagnosed and people didn’t come up due to social stigmas doesn’t mean that past generations were free from its shackles. It just means that the people struggling with them suffered more, sometimes in silence and sometimes loud enough for society to get fed up and cage them into dingy mental wards. Past generations have had suicides, they had people fighting a battle with themselves for survival and they had people who won battles and those who lost them.

Dr.Imran Noorani, Chief Psychologist at CDC, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital New Delhi, who has over a decade of experience in the field of mental health says how he often finds people suffering from mental illnesses have to fight two separate battles. They have to fight for their own survival against their illness as well as fight the family, friends and the stigmas that are the barriers to seek proper guidance. The first barrier at times that such people face in getting treatment turns out to be their friends and family themselves as mental health is not taken as seriously as other medical illnesses in India. He stresses the importance of government-led initiatives to raise awareness and to tackle this issue at the grassroots level. At present, India spends only 0.05 per cent of its health budget on mental health. More expenditure in this area is necessary to train more people to pick up early red flag signs of neurodevelopmental disorders or mental illnesses. The earlier these red flag signs of neurodevelopmental disorders e.g Autism are brought to notice of professionals, better are the outcomes for the same, says Dr. Noorani.

Some hold the belief that if people in the past got through without treatment, then this new ‘entitled’ generation should be able to do the same. This line of thought ends up being extremely detrimental to the progress that we have made in dismantling the stigma surrounding mental illnesses. The human race has survived because we know how to learn from history, we know how not to repeat past mistakes. Just because people in the past suffered due to ignorance and lack of empathy does not mean everyone should share the same fate. True progress is meant to guarantee not only survival but also the happiness of the people that survive. And believing that people should just suffer, without raising a voice, without reaching out for professional help, & not striving to improve quality of life is a thought heading toward mental catastrophe.

A person fortunate enough to get to the point where they can start looking for help faces other unique challenges, these ones more physical in nature. Getting help is not as simple as just going to a psychologist. A psychiatrist is often involved, and a fortune has to be spent on medicines. A good therapist costs around 1.5k rupees per session, a psychiatrist visit would have you down by at least another 1k and there is also a significant amount spent on pharmaceuticals. Assuming you take 3 sessions a month with your psychologist, with one visit to the psychiatrist along with staying on top of your medication, you easily get a total of 10k per month. Which becomes 1.2 lakhs over the year. With an average annual per capita income of ₹ 1,15,293 and ₹ 1,26,521 respectively for the years 2017-18 and 2018-19 (source: MOSPI ), how many people in our country can actually afford this? A factor contributing to the high treatment cost is the wide supply-demand gap between the number of trained professionals and the number of people seeking help with their mental issues. According to the Union ministry of health and family welfare, the country needs 11,500 psychiatrists but has just 3,500. In a country where one student commits suicide every hour, according to National Crime Records Bureau, 2015 (the latest data available), the entire mental health workforce, comprising psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric social workers and psychiatric nurses stands at 7,000, while the actual requirement is 54,750.

So first you must get over the social stigmas surrounding mental health, then you must spend a fortune finding a therapist that understands you, that is, pay for several trial sessions with different therapists, possibly go into debt over this and even then, if you do not manage to get proper help before your funds run out, you may end up broke and in a worse situation than before.

Also, while individuals are the ones suffering from these problems, their individualization rids of culpability the societal structures that add to their mental strains. For example, workers getting underpaid may contribute to the mental strain that they face. Other societal structures of inequality such as patriarchy are constant add-ons to the stress faced by women, caste discrimination is a major cause of worry for lower caste members of society. When we treat mental illnesses as an issue that is completely isolated to individuals we give structures as the caste system, capitalism and patriarchy heightened power over our well-being and prevent healthy reforms that would work towards the benefit of the marginalized population.

The experiences of individuals matter, they deserve assurance in their inviolability. Each death by suicide is a tragedy we could do without but trying to fix the problem of mental health without acknowledging these issues and other perspectives than our own is a fatal mistake that we have been making for far too long. If we truly care about these people, then we must also begin to care about the unique hindrances that they face just trying to make their lives better and resolve to fix them, otherwise, our pretension to care is just that, an act meant to garner praise using the suffering of others.

A huge thanks to Dr Imran for devoting his valuable time and effort in helping me write this blog.