What’s in your head?

Almost no one I know gives mental health the kind of attention we allocate to, say, a fractured hand. Representation pic/Getty Images

My first inkling of things being different from how they used to be was when I started to weep while watching videos on YouTube. This began to happen at moments I would once dismiss as cheesy, so my change in demeanour was unnerving. There were periods when I would find myself staring at my laptop in silence, thinking about how the coming day would be exactly as fruitless as the last one. It then started to happen while I read the news, looking at reports from around the world about businesses shutting down, jobs being lost, and senior citizens struggling to cope with isolation.

I realised, after a point, that I wasn't growing sentimental, but that my coping mechanisms for dealing with the world were starting to fray at the edges. I was depressed, and I had simply conditioned myself to not paying attention because we have been encouraged to take life on the chin and move on.

Almost no one I know gives mental health the kind of attention we allocate to, say, a fractured hand. We think of our minds as reliable, ever-ticking organisms with a will of their own, always at our disposal until the moment they cease to be. In February 2020, The Lancet published a report on mental disorders in India, placing it among the leading causes of non-fatal disease. In 2017, apparently, 197 million Indians had mental disorders, including 45 million with depressive disorders and almost 45 million with anxiety disorders. One in seven Indians were affected by mental disorders of varying severity that year, a figure that has reportedly almost doubled since 1990. The numbers were startling, but not entirely surprising.

In 2015, a study by the World Health Organization predicted that one in five of us would suffer from depression in our lifetime, equivalent to 200 million people. That wasn't the most interesting aspect of the study though; it was how respondents in India treated the subject of mental illness. 87 per cent of them showed awareness, but a staggering 71 per cent also used terms associated with stigma.

The fear of being labelled and judged by family and friends often prevented people from doing what they needed to protect themselves, which saddened and frightened me because I assumed these respondents were educated and urban. I couldn't wrap my head around what this meant for millions outside the borders of our big cities, where an ambulance is a luxury and potentially life-threatening ailments are treated with home remedies. Did they even acknowledge the presence of mental disorders? Were they allowed to talk about it? Did any of them have access to information that could help?

A bit of research showed that this wasn't a problem restricted to older people either. In November 2020, a paper by the international open access, peer-reviewed journal BMC Psychiatry reported that 20 per cent of youth around the globe experience mental disorders. It added that a mere 7.3 per cent of India's 365 million youth reported such problems. The study laid the blame for this on public stigma, calling it an important factor in preventing young people from seeking help.

Not a week goes by on social media platforms where someone puts out a call for affordable therapy. What more and more of these people ask for, however, are recommendations from psychiatrists who won't judge them. It says a lot about what those who summon the courage to seek therapy have to contend with after they find themselves in the presence of a professional. Given the paucity of resources in urban India, it makes one wonder how many people stop giving therapy a chance after being at the receiving end of unnecessary prejudice.

The pandemic has caused physical and emotional damage in ways that may take us years to uncover and fathom. It has changed how we engage with the world, redrawn the dynamics of relationships everywhere, and affected families the world over. We claim to be a resilient people, but our boasts of imaginary immunity rang hollow as thousands of our countrymen succumbed to COVID-19. If we can admit that our bodies aren't as strong as we thought they were, it may also be time to stop taking our minds for granted.

It is only when we introduce conversations about mental health into our everyday lives, the way we discuss common colds and aching bones, that we can evaluate the resources currently at our disposal, and work towards making sure young people have tools and support that the rest of us were denied.

When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.