Mental health – The most misunderstood concept in India

In India, it appears to me that there is a systematic neglect pertaining to the mental health of it’s general citizens.

Following are some of the primary reasons for the above statement:

1. The number of doctors registered as psychiatrists is way too low. Click on this link to understand the basis of this argument
2. Psychology is studied as a subject of Arts and not Science in most colleges in India. There is very little research on the age old methods and the style of teaching is not very research oriented and hence curbs the active participation of research oriented individuals.
3. All mental health problems are largely generalized by the society and term it as Mania (Pagalpan in hindi). This taboo doesn’t let people talk about the real issues and they either get accustomed to it or are forced to take their lives. This very fact, primarily discourages people from accepting that they are not mentally well. This initiates a chain of compounding in the real issues people face.
4. Another set of side effect is spread by social media where normal people who get accustomed to the buzz words like anxiety, depression etc and resort to self diagnosis without going to a psychiatrist . They even resort to diagnosing normal feelings of sadness and general anticipation as depression and anxiety respectively. This demeans the actual problem and people who are really suffering from clinical depression and other mental illness discount their problem and get discouraged from seeking help.

It is not that the government has not taken any steps, the government in the past few years has taken adolescents and child mental health a serious topic and is working towards it. But the adult population remains largely untouched.

We get used to noticing the problems with our physical body as it is noticeable and many times there are clear demarcations between a healthy and non healthy individual. The same is the case with mental health but the problem is that the demarcations are not as clear as that in case of the physical problems.
Often it is noted that physical symptoms trigger mental health problems. eg. PTSD (Post Traumatic stress disorder)

We all want to be be physically fit and there are a lot of exercises and diet plans that engulf the whole of internet. There is hardly any talk about being mentally fit and there are really less number of articles and most of them are like a quick fix to an immediate problem without a thought of the long run impact. The diet plans that you follow for becoming physically fit, rarely includes studies that state the effect of the diet on the mental health of the individual. There seems to be a huge disconnect in this area.

If you are reading this article, you might have heard few of your friends saying, oh I am in depression at the slightest onset of sadness. You might have seen a lot of posts like this on the social platform where people use self diagnosed mental health issues to draw attention to their profiles. Well, not all of them are wrongly diagnosed or self diagnosed, we still have become accustomed to call the slightest feeling of sadness as depression. These are nothing but stereotypes that discount the actual issue. As a rule, please get diagnosed by a psychiatrist to ensure that you are really having a problem.

To give a picture of the education sector, Psychology is studied as a subject of arts and not science in India. It’s really rare in India to study psychology as science. This I realized when I wanted to pursue a masters degree in Psychology in India

In this blog for mental health, all posts would be targeting at giving most scientific explanations for many common problems that we face in life.