Trivialisation of Mental Health

I was writing on the topic of mental health before the unfortunate case of Sushant Singh and as everyone has suddenly become an expert into the field of mental health and depression, I modified the content accordingly. The topic of mental health is very close to my heart. Many of my poems and blog posts have revolved solely around motivation, positivity and the spirit of carrying on. Like all the wise sounds right now, I also use to think few years back, that all you need is positivity, will power and a strong character. You need to hang on and fight back. Motivation is enough to sail you through any storm. But after going through some very dark phases in my life recently, I have challenged all my earlier notions on this topic.

Let us get some facts straight and by facts, I mean facts, not perspective or opinion. Depression is a mental illness. It is not a phase where you are down because you failed in a test, or missed your train, or broke your mobile screen and you can get cheered by eating an ice cream. It is not something you can be talked out against.

Are you tensed? Don’t be!!

Are you worried? Stop worrying!

Are you stressed? Take a chill pill!

It doesn’t work like that. It is not a weakness of character. It is not a temporary hormonal imbalance. It gets much deeper than that. It’s not something that you can get done with by reading a self-help book and watching a feel good movie.

When I read these chest thumping posts of middle class self-obsessed public that how they never quit, how they were strong, how they struggled yet they enjoy their life. I can only laugh on the reality that people are not even aware of what depression does to a person. They never faced it. They are comparing their momentary sadness to a mental illness. If only we were made aware of depression and mental health in school or college or through a widespread awareness campaign like that done for AIDS, COVID etc perhaps people would have been more sensitive and educated on the topic.

You can read some chest thumping self-praising statements of many Bollywood personalities also on how they too struggled, but they carry on, they fought the darkness and made a way. Well, good for you, congratulations, but stop comparing what you did to someone who took an extreme step. All your fairy tales stories are as good as Sushant’s character trying to console his son to not give up on life, be strong and it’s ok to be a looser. It’s not like he has not heard of all these positive stories. It’s not like he doesn’t know that failure is temporary. Go through his past interviews, he was much wiser than that. But what most people don’t realize is depression for a prolonged period make a person hopeless.

And depression is not limited to sadness or failure also. It has many reasons. I have seen people getting depress after achieving success because now they don’t know what they want to do in life. They had achieved what they want to achieve and now they find no purpose of life. Deepika Padukone was quite open about her depression, was she suffering from failure that time? Chester Bennington, Kurt Cobain, Robin Williams there are many examples of people who lost the will to live despite making a great career and achieving great success.

I am not questioning the good will and good intention of people when they say suicide is not an option. But I am questioning their lack of awareness on the matter when they think that a person who is depressed thinks with same logical clarity and rationality which they are having right now. Sushant Singh who took the extreme step of taking his life was a much different person than the Sushant Singh who was consoling his son in the movie Chicchore. Depression changes your thought process, your decision making ability, and your conventions of life. Within few weeks, you are a different person. You are a person who are not able to answer the questions that helps you propel forward in life. The treatment is a long term process of regular therapy, medication and having a strong support system. Few whatsapp forwards and jokes can’t cure it.

Most of us, the common people, have struggled in life. We have fought for grades in school, ended up not getting the college we wanted, struggled in job and yet we carried on in life. It’s good that we fought and we are happy. But that doesn’t give us any right to glamourize and glorify our struggle and demean and insult those who were not able to cope up with adversities of life.

“I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet”

I used to do that a lot earlier. Telling people that they have no right to be sad or unhappy because people are living far worse. Telling them we should be happy that we are in good college and we have great opportunities and thus we should be happy and cheerful all the time as life could always be much worse. I used to tell that to myself also a lot of time. The first thing that my professor told us in our class of managerial counselling was, don’t try to console or cheer up anyone by telling them the adversities of other. Never ever do the mistake of comparing someone’s pain with someone else’ pain and make them feel bad about themselves that how dare they thought to be unhappy when they have so much good in the life.

It doesn’t work that way. Everyone’s pain is unique and so is their ability to cope up with it. You can’t ridicule a person to be weak, to be sad, and to be emotionally hurt. You can’t do chest thumping regularly just because you fought back with life.

 I see many Bollywood personalities now indirectly taking a jibe at Sushant saying he was very successful, Bollywood has so many struggler, he was not grateful for opportunities he god. That is exactly what is wrong with the society, to stop feeling sorry for a person just because he was successful. Just because he was better than other, the society takes away the right to be unhappy, sad or hurt from that person. That is the reason why people won’t talk openly about their unhappiness. If any celebrity comes forward that they are unhappy and depress, just look at the comments of people on that thread, they ridicule and insult them, they laugh on them, they say that look at that famous pretentious douche, living life craved by millions yet complaining. We struggle so much and he lives in his bunglow, he has no right to be depressed.

 The society has taken away the right to talk about the unhappiness from people and then we write posts on opening up and talking up and vent out your feelings. You will find so many people uploading the status of reach out to us now, open up and talk. Again, I do not doubt their good gesture. But, to be very honest, a person who is depressed or feeling low, won’t come forward in most cases. They lose the will to reach out to others and ask for help. If you want to help, the onus is on you to find out those who are sad. Deep dive into those fake smileys and laughing gestures and emotionless ‘haha’ written and identify whether the people around you, the people you care about are going through some problems or not. That trust, that rapport, that ease of sharing has to be build first and then only a person will come forward and share and may be it will be a great help to the society. But any depressed person will avoid sharing his/her feeling to a stranger.

Why people don’t open up is also an interesting subject? There are always trust issue, we are told to be strong and move on in life from the beginning and also people in general don’t like people who complaint. If you share that you are not happy with your college, with your job, with your life in general. The society will tag you with the title of being cribber. Look, he is cribbing again, earning lakhs per month and yet unhappy, yet complaining, yet suffocating, spreading negativity as usual. There is so much stigma attach with people sharing why they are feeling bad about life in general, the posts of open up and talk in hindsight when someone has taken an extreme step appears super hypocritical to me. Confining yourself in your solitude is a slow process, an extrovert person doesn’t suddenly becomes a loner, and often people are careless to identify these symptoms.

I am not expert in this field. But I still feel that the people who have power are still not taking this topic seriously. On paper, you see companies organizing random workshops, inviting guests, doing some standalone activities. It’s a good step that at least something is being started. I have no idea whether schools and colleges are also doing something about it or not, having a subject on mental health in school will be of great help for the next generation. But, as long as we live in a society where performers are rewarded and strugglers are ridiculed, when that manager gets promotion who tortured his employees to achieve targets damaging their mental health to a large extent, teachers and professors bullying the students, office bullies, groupies etc exist and the system doesn’t have enough checks and control measures to help the needy and punish the offenders. All this awareness will remain a temporary social media movement and die its natural death.

Empathy, sensitivity, compassion, forgiveness, maturity, companionship there are many words which are now confined to fictional novels and movies now. The world needs more healing, I can just hope the world will look forward to stop running for a while and fix the damaged ones.