Mental Health as a Taboo

 

Autism in childhood, adult conditions such are anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, and dementia in old age are all examples of mental illness. According to WHO, mental illness makes up for 15% of the total diseases in the world. An estimate says that from 1990 to 2017, every 1 in 7 Indians has suffered from some kind of mental illness be it anxiety, depression or severe conditions like schizophrenia or dyslexia. It would not be an overstatement to say that India is going through a mental health epidemic. This situation is no less than the COVID-19 pandemic currently raging through the world.

Lack of mental health awareness among Indians is one of the most important reasons for the unprecedented outbreak of mental diseases most of which majority are psychiatric problems. Pick up any random Indian and they would know the difference between an oncologist and cardiologist but they won’t be able to tell a psychiatrist from a psychologist or a neurologist. As we Bengalis love to say, they would be called পাগলের দাক্তার. Every person suffering from mental illness is looked down upon and considered separate from the rest of the society. We have a social taboo to consider all patients with mental illness as lunatics or maniacs. They’re voluntarily separated from the rest of the society. One would easily sympathize with a cancer patient but none would even understand what schizophrenia is like. This worsens the condition of the mentally ill people as they feel detached from the society and drown themselves in agony. When someone suffers from anxiety or depression, the society finds reasons to blame the person for his/her own condition. The society has made us think that anxiety or depression is a sign of immaturity and exaggeration of the problems nearly every man faces. Maybe they have faced trauma you can’t even imagine and are trying their best to recover. All the society does is make it harder for them to get back to normal. I have just one advice to the ignorant people: Do not judge people you don’t know.

The only way our society can overcome this taboo is by educating people at the grassroot level. The primary target should be students. They need to be convinced that mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of or to be looked down upon. Mentally ill kids are not to be separated from the other kids. The teachers and guardians need to make sure that they’re not ill-treated or bullied. We need to teach our kids that mental illness is same as any other kind of illness and is in no way, the fault of the person. The day we see a mentally ill patient the same way we see a typhoid patient is the day we’ll see a dramatic reduction in mental health issues in the country.