On 10th Oct, we celebrated World mental health day. However, it’s a day for celebration. This day is celebrated for education, awareness and advocacy against social stigma. This year’s theme was “Make mental health and well-being for all a global priority.”
We all knew that the last two years had passed like “Pigeon in a cage”. Every person house arrested without people-to-people contact, no gossip, no chit chat, no colleagues talk, no chai wali newspaper reading in nukkad and mahualla. This pandemic has mentally disturbed everyone. Especially children and teenage groups. Only the internet and social media were the way to serve there day to day activities. And this badly affected their cognitive behaviour. Post-Covid its also affected them.
Our day-to-day life becomes so harassing, Like for school-going children burden of results and higher education competition. A job-oriented person has been mentally disturbed by a job or is unemployed tension. Most women lost their jobs due to caring family during the Covid pandemic. So this has an impact on their life so badly. We predict all is okay within us OR society, but everyone has ignored this issue. The fact is that we all are not able to accept that someone is having this issue. Stress becomes hypertension, and this also takes a higher issue like Mental health. We are not ready to talk about this. Some states like Odisha and Karnataka have started a helpline no for this. Still, not a single person is ready to share their issue just because of the face of others ” What will people think about this” This kind of sigma has sometimes lost a life.
Our government of India has started the programme to make people aware and start from their level to help a person suffering from this issue. But the communication gap between family, friends and society has not been filled. And this has been a challenge for us.
Roughly 56 million Indians suffered from depression, and this is not Data. This is about how they want to lose their life just because of a single-digit of issues. Why can we not solve this problem? Why do we talk about this on 10th Oct only? Why can’t we make life so easy with affordability and accessibility? Most teenage lose their life just from depression. Parents need to be very specific about how to deal with this until they have to survive and we have to lose their life. No one can help us. Why does everyone understand this phenomenon cant?
What Can Be The Way Forward
1) Basic level awareness – At the school level, Teachers need to be trained to differentiate between normal and depression and talk to their students about this.
2) Parents – Parents should talk to each other and family members about this.
3)Government – The government run the programme at rural and urban levels via Television, News media and other radio communication.
And most importantly we should accept that we can have mental health issues and should talk to a specialist or even our friends and family or anyone from the helpline run the program by Government. But its high time we start talking about it.