Full stop stigma, because now is the beginning of newer and braver conversations around mental health. We have been constantly focused on the irrational balance between resources and the public in the area of mental health, where availability is far less and the population is far large.
But tables have started to turn a bit and we have communication, explorations and varied research in a variety of mental health domains. We have many psychologists who are taking their ethics, passion and professional knowledge seriously and working around the varied domains and school approach the field has to offer.
Now is the time to cash upon the opportunity to have conversations with various professionals from the field of mental healthcare to expand our knowledge and respect for how the struggles to make mental health a normal reality has been difficult. It’s important to listen to them and their journey of ups and downs and learning that what makes a day brighter — safety or the number of clients coming to them.
To understand the challenges they undertook to mount a message to people to appreciate that mental health isn’t unreasonable or unrealistic, rather, it’s a real entity that needs to be acknowledged for all the efforts to ensure the health and well-being of the people.
PSY-FI: For a Healthy Mind is an organisation concerned with righteous mental health education and professional counselling centre with an intention that even the grass-root level individual should be able to perceive what mental health is and means. The efforts have been constant to generate awareness, advocacy and treatment at a variety of places of pursuit, including the Tihar Jail, Delhi High Court, DAV schools in Delhi, Krupanidhi Institutes, Bangalore etc.
The organisation is now bringing forth real conversations with psychotherapists and aspiring psychologists from the field of psychology and mental health to increase awareness and knowledge of common people to communicate that we are a mental health positive community with possibilities and prevention to the best of our intent.
About the author: Jigyasa Tandon is a trained mental health educationist at NIMHANS, Bangalore, a counselling psychologist (Sensitive Groups) and an author. She is associated with PSY-FI: For a Healthy Mind as a curator of various campaigns and educational activities organised by the organisation.