HOW IS YOUR MEN­TAL HEALTH? We know no one’s asked you be­fore. It’s time to ask –‘Ki Haal Hai?’ The fact is that we are sick. And we are afraid to talk about it. Too many of us are ac­tu­ally bro­ken deep in­side –shat­tered. Many are on the verge. We read heart­break­ing news every day. Our kids are com­mit­ting sui­cide be­cause of poor exam re­sults. Our farm­ers are end­ing their lives due to eco­nomic dis­tress. Our pol­i­tics leaves us shaken to the core.

How else is a sick so­ci­ety de­fined? We need to walk into a room where some­one coun­sels us, talks to us treats us. We need help, and we do not who to ask, or who can help. We know that “pa­gals” go to “psy­chi­a­trists” — that’s what pop­u­lar dis­course and shoddy Hindi cin­ema have taught us.

It is time to learn bet­ter.

This episode of Daleel, aired orig­i­nally on Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 2, 2022, brings to­gether top psy­chi­a­trists and ac­tivists. Se­nior jour­nal­ist SP Singh is in con­ver­sa­tion with Dr Anirudh Kala, Psy­chi­a­trist & Au­thor of “An Un­safe Asy­lum”, as also of the novel “Two and a Half Rivers”; Dr Simmi Waraich, Psy­chi­a­trist, For­tis Hos­pi­tal, Mo­hali; and Ms Supreet Dhi­man, Sex­ual Abuse Ac­tivist & Au­thor of “Mother of All Tales”.

The WSN is proud to bring this de­bate to you with the aim of restor­ing some san­ity to an is­sue that merely im­parted the word ‘pa­gal’ to vic­tims for decades. Amid a mad ca­coph­ony of po­lit­i­cal dis­course, the world needs this san­ity.

Si­mone Biles, one of the world’s top gym­nasts, who won four golds in the Rio Olympics -she chose to sit out in Tokyo and made men­tal health the sub­ject of global
con­ver­sa­tions in sports and be­yond. Naomi Os­aka, a Black, Asian woman, dis­closed
her men­tal health symp­toms. Ac­tress Deepika Padukone spoke about the stereo­typ­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the dis­ease that forces peo­ple to stay silent rather than seek help. It is time to break that taboo talk­ing about men­tal health is­sues.

A maths pro­fes­sor turned schiz­o­phrenic in 1959, spent decades in psy­chi­atric
hos­pi­tals, even­tu­ally re­turned to acad­e­mia in the 1980s and won a No­bel Prize in 1994! What would have been his fate in In­dia?

A so­ci­ety that deals with men­tal health by deny­ing it’s a se­ri­ous, com­plex and ur­gent is­sue, is a sick so­ci­ety.

The fact is that we don’t even have a vo­cab­u­lary to ar­tic­u­late dis­tress, even when most of us are in dis­tress. In how many fam­i­lies do peo­ple un­der­stand they need to see a coun­sel­lor af­ter the loss of a loved one? If you knew the data about the state of the health of the In­dian Army, you’d be shocked at how ap­a­thetic we are to that jawan stand­ing on the Kargil.

A so­ci­ety that deals with men­tal health by deny­ing it’s a se­ri­ous, com­plex and ur­gent is­sue, is a sick so­ci­ety.

The fact is that there’s a hi­er­ar­chy within the fam­ily, and there’s hy­per-com­pe­ti­tion out­side. The en­tire set-up de­mands con­for­mity from in­di­vid­u­als; so you re­press anger and suf­fer­ing. There is a mas­sive de­mand for “pos­i­tiv­ity”. ‘How are you?’ is sup­posed to meet up with ‘Chardhi Kala – First Class’ – A cul­ture of toxic pos­i­tiv­ity muf­fles our in­ner be­ing.

Our chil­dren ex­press anx­i­ety about school; the young could be in dis­tress over a
bro­ken crush. We don’t even see this as a prob­lem we should walk into a clinic with.

Are we pre­pared for a men­tal health cri­sis?

What does be­ing a Mus­lim mean for one’s men­tal health? What does be­ing a Dalit mean? What hap­pens to the men­tal health of those in LGBTQ+ com­mu­nity? Are we rush­ing coun­sel­lors to the fam­i­lies of sui­cide-hit farm­ers? How do rape/​in­cest sur­vivors deal with men­tal agony? 

Ex­perts say most young peo­ple are healthy, phys­i­cally and emo­tion­ally, and yet one
in five meets the cri­te­ria for a men­tal dis­or­der.

What does be­ing a Mus­lim mean for one’s men­tal health? What does be­ing a Dalit mean? What hap­pens to the men­tal health of those in LGBTQ+ com­mu­nity? Are we rush­ing coun­sel­lors to the fam­i­lies of sui­cide-hit farm­ers? How do rape/​in­cest sur­vivors deal with men­tal agony? Do fam­i­lies of those caught for any crim­i­nal act suf­fer men­tal agony? How does so­ci­ety deal with them? What hap­pens to a young kid in school be­ing called a ‘bha­pa’ by his class­mates all the time? What hap­pens to kids who have some kind of hand­i­cap?

There are thou­sands of fam­i­lies of dis­ap­peared youth in Pun­jab, of those killed in
fake en­coun­ters, those who re­mained un­ac­counted for. Who has ever thought of
pro­vid­ing them coun­selling? What must have been the men­tal health state of
fam­i­lies? Three decades of mil­i­tancy in Kash­mir have given us some new dic­tion.
Among these terms is ‘half-wid­ows’, a state of liv­ing for mar­ried/​pre­sumed wid­owed Kash­miri women that makes sense only in a sick so­ci­ety. Just try google-ing the term, and you’ll find your hu­man­ity at a loss. Then ask your­self -Where is the men­tal health di­men­sion of this is­sue?

Do fam­i­lies of those caught for any crim­i­nal act suf­fer men­tal agony? How does so­ci­ety deal with them? What hap­pens to a young kid in school be­ing called a ‘bha­pa’ by his class­mates all the time? What hap­pens to kids who have some kind of hand­i­cap?

There’s a pan­demic in the air, and it’s more deadly than Covid. It is a creep­ing,
shad­owy pan­demic of an­guish, ten­sion, agony. Join the con­ver­sa­tion, talk about it.
We can­not af­ford to be judg­men­tal about our men­tal health.