Mid-Day Online caught up with him for an exclusive interview, wherein he highlighted the importance of having a sound mental health, amongst other important things.
Pic Courtesy: PR
Born in London, and raised in the United States, Dr. Shriram Nene happens to be one of the most sought-after doctors (Healthcare Innovator and Cardiovascular Surgeon) in the world. Besides that, he is also the loving and caring husband of Bollywood’s very own ‘dhak dhak’ lady Madhuri Dixit. Mid-Day Online caught up with him for an exclusive interview, wherein he highlighted the importance of having a sound mental health, amongst other important things.
Dr. Nene, can you elaborate on the importance of Mental Health in today's time?
In India, it has always been about mind, body, and soul but we don't spend enough time on mental health and in my opinion, it is an untapped reservoir of strength, and it is something we underestimate in terms of what extent this disease is. Moreover, globally as well as in India we disconnect the brain and more importantly mental health from the critical features of health care overall. So, I think that it's so important at this age and time to bring everything together and say that things are important regarding mental health and with regards to your happiness. In particular, one of the things which I think is critical is that we accept the fact that mental health is something that we need to contend with and this was never much clear during the pandemic.
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Has anyone you know or any person struggled with any kind of clinically diagnosed mental health condition come to you for advice? If so, will you be comfortable sharing your experience?
In my career as well as in my family and friends, people go through things. Whether it is postpartum depression or whether it's a colleague who had issues with addiction OR have problems with PTSD it's so common to see that. PTSD in particular heart surgeons and medical Care practitioners were very common. You never remember your success. 99.9% of the time you are successful. But the time you wake up with cold sweats when you think about cases that didn't go quite as planned. You know, what I did every single day of my life as a heart surgeon for 20 years was a risk, and if you did nothing you knew what would happen and if you did something there was a small chance. But no one came to us and said you need counseling for those with post-traumatic stress disorder which is very common amongst health care providers and leads to having burn out, as I mentioned on my YouTube channel. In addition to that, it's common amongst police officers as well as emergency care people and so I think all of these things have to be addressed and then secondly, I dealt with lots of family members who have come under all kinds of stress. Indian society is kind of pushy, just to do anything you have to compete and sometimes what we forget is to follow our happiness and try to do something which will lead to your ultimate well-being and that of everyone around you. It is just not about getting on the train because that in India is a hard thing, right? and to get a que/admission this or that is not an easy thing? But eventually what we have to look at is each person's gifts and I think every person has some gifts. We are a country of 1.35 billion people statistically you know there is so much genuineness but also so many people need help and what we need to do is to address that. As a heart surgeon I can tell you in all varieties of my career I would say 50per of my care was medical. The other 50 per was dealing with the brain and getting them to feel like they own their disease and own the fact that they were getting better.
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Has anyone reached out to you to discuss the mental health issue they have been going through?
Absolutely, there are multiple people. It's not easy in India as world wide mental health is not acknowledged as a medical disease and honestly, in 50 years, we will understand the Neo transmitter. We will understand the basis of this, and we'll also understand what makes us happy and what doesn't. We only come upon what are the criteria. I will give you an example: My son is applying to college right now. It’s Incredibly stressful and you have to reframe that argument and you have to say that college is the middle game. The game of getting in is different from the end game, where you follow your passion and do something meaningful, to create impactful for the world. I keep reminding myself as well as my son that what matters most is what makes you happy and that's not occasionally easy in India at all.
Do you think Mental Health took a toll on people during Covid 19 times?
Absolutely, A lot of deaths, as well as a lot of chronic illness and a lot of other things, got me collected for mental health as well as other things during the covid era because we didn't know. India doesn't have one log of how many people die of one element. So I think what we have to look at together is how we make it a priority and how we say that there is stigma or taboo about saying that I am having trouble with it. I think as a society, people have issues, and we say that people are grumpy. But what we need to address is how we move towards a global quotient of happiness. How do we make people think that it's not acceptable to neglect this stuff? Deal with it and get therapy, get people in on that. During Covid 19, there was a lot of depression. Most of us were struggling, I can tell you from a personal point that It was hard to see what my peers were going through. Hard to see what my friends were going through, and I did my best to get things done.
These days, many people (young and old) are becoming victims’ day by day to the silent problem of mental health. Is there anything that you want to tell them?
Find someone you trust and get help and address it as if it needs a real medical problem Because you don't have to suffer. Nowadays you have good therapy. They have good meditations. I was trained at a place that created a Diagnostic and statistical manual at Washington University and they thought us that if you could figure out the disease and figure out what's going on with people and statically said that all the symptoms lead to a situation where there is a medical illness, not just a psychiatric illness and you can treat that with the right drugs it could make a difference. This was critical in schizophrenia where haloperidol and some of the other drugs changed the whole world for the people who suffer from schizophrenia and were dysfunctional and I see in the next 20 to 50 years we will determine what neo transmitters do. We will determine what we can give to patients to help them and as a result, we will come back to medically induced mental disease as a role with better therapy and meditations and other things. Also, I think there are better opportunities here to not neglect these things. The second thing is let's just not be judgmental. You should never be judgmental with someone who is struggling with things like mental illness because I think it's critical.
What advice do you give people to motivate themselves daily?
I say take one day at a time. Be happy, know what your purpose is and ask why every day?. Next, find people around you who care for you. Because the end of its experience is everything. It's about trying to do something that matters. So I hope this helps. Mental health is a priority. More now or never. So I think together we need to join hands and do something that matters. So I am looking for such joining hands and thank you so much for covering that. I know it's mental health day. But I think it should be that. I think we should always think about how to take care of other people and the last thing I want to say is that keep your traitor up and see other people are good around you and always ask how they are doing. Try to practice this rule every day. How they treat you, will be how you treat them? But also see that they are doing.
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