It is not a sight we see very often in the Indian context. I am referring to Deepika Padukone speaking openly about her battle with depression a<\/p>\n
while ago. \u201cWhen I was in pain, suffering alone\u2026 I was going about my day, posing for cameras\u2026 signing autographs. What nobody saw was<\/p>\n
that I would break down for no reason \u2026getting out of bed was a struggle,\u201d she wrote in Hindustan Times earlier this week. What made a<\/p>\n
successful actor, the daughter of a badminton world champion, go out on a limb and discuss her struggle to overcome depression? When I was<\/p>\n
reading about Deepika Padukone\u2019s encounters with mental problems, I was reminded of the virtually unknown RK Shukla.<\/p>\n
Unlike Padukone, Shukla never got a chance to face up to his anxieties and survive to tell the tale. Driven to tipping point by workplace stress,<\/p>\n
the Madhya Pradesh police head constable committed suicide when he was asked to clean drains on Gandhi Jayanti. Two days later, BSF<\/p>\n
jawan Dharam Singh shot himself with his service rifle at Sukma in Chhattisgarh, a hotbed of Naxalite insurgency. A few months before this, in<\/p>\n
separate incidents, three other Central Reserve Police Force jawans killed themselves in a similar fashion at camps in Bijapur, Dhamtari and<\/p>\n
Sukma.<\/p>\n
This spate of suicides in the ranks of India\u2019s police and central armed forces reminded me of a statement that BSF director general KK Sharma<\/p>\n
made during a workshop on mental health a few months ago: More BSF personnel are dying of mental illnesses than in the line of duty, Sharma<\/p>\n
had said. What is driving this cycle of depression, melancholy and subsequent suicide? In a demanding profession that entails putting in<\/p>\n
inhumanly long hours along with the responsibility of safeguarding the nation\u2019s frontiers, the added burden of mental illness could prove to be<\/p>\n
the proverbial last straw that breaks the soldiers\u2019 back.<\/p>\n
Our policemen and soldiers are not the only ones fighting the demons in their heads. India has one of the highest prevalence of mental illnesses<\/p>\n
in the world, and the highest suicide rate among its youth. So, anybody from the IT professional chasing deadlines, the insurance executive<\/p>\n
struggling to meet stretch targets, the journalist doing graveyard shifts or that teenager glued to the tablet seated next to you in the Metro \u2014<\/p>\n
could be nurturing a mental health condition. The incidents of depression have become so frequent that you and I could be walking around with<\/p>\n
what shrinks describe as a \u201ccommon mental disorder\u201d \u2013 what ordinary folks like us call depression and anxiety \u2013 and our loved ones might not<\/p>\n
have an inkling about it. Or perhaps they want to be deluded into believing that nobody in their family needs help from a psychiatrist.<\/p>\n
If you think I am being alarmist, take a look at these numbers. According to WHO statistics, more than 58 million people in India are grappling<\/p>\n
with depressive disorders. Anti-depressant sales in the country have shot through the roof, growing from Rs 760 crore in 2013 to Rs 1,093<\/p>\n
crore in 2016. But clearly, just medication is not enough to cure or mitigate a mental health condition. Some of this can be blamed on the gap<\/p>\n
between those suffering from these conditions and the facilities available to treat them. More than 90% of those suffering from mental health<\/p>\n
conditions don\u2019t even receive elementary mental healthcare in India. The country has only 0.301 psychiatrists for every 100,000 people<\/p>\n
suffering from mental illnesses. These are just some of the reasons.<\/p>\n
Traditionally the stigma that our society attaches to seeking psychiatric help dissuades most people from visiting mental health practitioners.<\/p>\n
Among these are parents who often ignore danger signals in their children until it is too late. Speak to counsellors in schools and you realise<\/p>\n
how even the most progressive professionals are most reluctant when it comes to actually seeing a psychiatrist for their child.<\/p>\n
But this seems to be changing, though far too slowly. Many more Indians, particularly the well-travelled ones, appear to be catching up with the<\/p>\n
West when it comes to seeking help. This generation of Indians wielding smartphones is more open to newer approaches to mental health. This<\/p>\n
along with greater awareness and the proven efficacy of drugs that help you regulate mood swings have all played a part in helping change<\/p>\n
mindsets.<\/p>\n
The other day I was speaking to a psychiatrist friend, a behavioural science specialist based in Gurugram. The next wave of solutions to<\/p>\n
overcome the gap between mental health practitioners and the millions suffering from depression in India could come from the Internet itself, he<\/p>\n
says. Think tele-psychiatry, webinars and anti-suicide helplines: Or being on the couch, virtually. He recalled the case of a 13-year-old from<\/p>\n
Jammu who called his hospital\u2019s anti-depression helpline to say playing the Blue Whale Challenge was making him suicidal. Within minutes of<\/p>\n
saying that he had reached a level where he was about to inflict harm on himself, chatting with a counsellor dissuaded the eighth-grader from<\/p>\n
taking up the next challenge. Within hours, he called back to say he wants the counsellor to speak to his friend as well. Often, a friendly but<\/p>\n
anonymous voice on the other end of the webcam is all this asocial, net-savvy generation of kids needs to deal with their anxieties.<\/p>\n
How invested are we as a nation, in tackling our mental health woes, I asked my friend. He gave me a WHO report. Compared to developed<\/p>\n
nations that spend more than 4% of their health budget on creating infrastructure for mental healthcare, India\u2019s expenditure is an abysmal<\/p>\n
0.06%, less even than Bangladesh (0.44%).<\/p>\n
Still, passing the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 (Act) indicates that the government\u2019s heart is in the right place. Prime Minister Narendra Modi<\/p>\n
emphasised the need to bring depression out of the closet in his Mann Ki Baat programme. \u201cWe (in India) are afraid to talk about it (depression)<\/p>\n
openly\u2026If depressed, share your feelings with others, it will make you feel better,\u201d he had said.<\/p>\n
I tend to agree with the perception that the new mental health Act is a patient-centric piece of legislation. To begin with, it decriminalises the<\/p>\n
attempt to suicide, bans the use of electric shock therapy for children with mental conditions and sets out to ensure that the dignity of people<\/p>\n
with mental illness is dealt with sensitively at all stages of treatment. Also, by recognising the \u201cright to access mental healthcare\u201d regardless of<\/p>\n
a person\u2019s income, gender, sexual orientation, place of living, or any other factor, it puts the onus of providing mental healthcare on the state by<\/p>\n
January 2018, when the Act is likely to come into force.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is not a sight we see very often in the Indian context. I am referring to Deepika Padukone speaking openly about her battle with depression a while ago. \u201cWhen I was in pain, suffering alone\u2026 I was going about my day, posing for cameras\u2026 signing autographs. What nobody saw was that I would break […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7732,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7733,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7731\/revisions\/7733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}