By now thousands of articles must have flooded your mailbox, news feed, and timelines highlighting the plight of mental health and its effect. Like millions of fans even I too was taken aback on hearing the tragic fatal case of Sushant Singh Rajput. My Twitter was flooding with people saying “He had 10 movies to do, was charging 8 crores per movie, was successful and rich. Then why did he commit suicide?”
And that’s when I decided to write. Write to not get published but to make you understand from the perspective of millions who battle mental health every second. Unlike typhoid and jaundice, mental health does not show common or physical symptoms. I won’t tell you what is mental health because I strongly believe that it is essential to draw a clear line to understand what is NOT mental health.
Mental Health is not the Bollywood narrative of Salman Khan’s Tere Naam where the actor is tied with ropes and handcuffs the moment he slips into deteriorating mental health. It is a state of emotional, psychological, and social well being of an individual. An individual is not a bunch of individuals;
Their pain may or may not be your pain. Their trigger point may not be your trigger point. And in anyway does not make their triggers or pain smaller or worthy of judgement.
I was 19 and joined one of the most prestigious Universities in India. By then, I bagged some of the best awards in debates, was extremely vocal on socio-political issues, had a bunch of great friends and supportive family. By the grace of God, I had almost everything that one would need to live well. But then, there were days I woke up in the middle of the night- crying. Crying over absolutely nothing that I could understand. Constantly buzzing through fears of losing people. I would go to the stage, fiercely debate on some topics – hang out with friends and run back to my room. Because I felt suffocated. My college didn’t have a counselling session or a professional counsellor but I was fortunate to have my counsellor Isha Ma’am who held on to me even on my darkest days. I had Mithila Ma’am, my professor of Political Science who would sit in the college till late evening only to hear me and my fears.
Neither of them told me what is right or wrong but simply made me feel okay to be in this situation, to look for the light within myself.
Are We Commodifying Mental Health?
In today’s generation of productivity and de-productivity, everything has a price. Mental health has also turned to an expensive capitalist commodity. From our very misunderstanding of understanding mental health in terms of success/name/fame to even the expenditure of undergoing therapy or counselling.
In Badi village of Madhya Pradesh, every household has a history of at least one suicide case. With a population of around 2500, there have been around 350 suicides in the last two decades. Paradoxically, the Sarpanch cites these incidents as a result of some “demonic” presence in the village. The process of registering a death is particularly inefficient in rural areas. Eventually, only about 25% of deaths are registered and only about 10% are medically certified. Death by suicide is frequently reported as due to illness or accident to avoid police investigation. Most families of suicide victims don’t want a post-mortem of the deceased.
While even till date much of the primary health care remains under-developed in many remote parts of the country, it is difficult to imagine a forum for developing clinical psychological treatments. The general notion of “speak to the elders” does not work in most cases due to lack of confidentiality and fear of judgement. And in no-way can be an alternative to professional therapy.
Cost Estimation: Budget Vs Mental Health
The Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 (MHCA) regulates through Section 18 of the Act – Right to access mental healthcare which further explains that “every person shall” have a right to access mental health care and treatment from mental health services run or funded by the appropriate government, and the government shall make sufficient provision as may be necessary. Meanwhile, much of the mental-health helplines often go unattended or not responded, the private clinics have a cost factor for one session of counselling that is skyrocketing. In 2019 the budget allocated to the National Health Programme was INR 40 Crore while only 5 Crore was spent on improving the scope of mental health treatment. Due to the gap in implementation and awareness of the mental healthcare system, the rate of dependency on medication and drugs are equally over-pressurized. Most of the colleges do not have a professional counselling facility and depend upon senior professors to counsel the students. Exactly a week ago, a student of Delhi University ended up dying by suicide for unknown reasons.
The Way Forward:
When I sit here and write this article, the only way I feel things will change is, when people reading this article will stop questioning the sanity of my words and judging between the lines. The biggest challenge for the mental health care system is to normalize mental health by freeing it from clutches of judgments, gossips, and unsolicited advice.
As Albert Camus supposedly put it “Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?” I hope today you will find someone to sip a cappuccino with while discussing this article!
Note: This was originally published here.
©naimisha,2020