MIND THE MIND

We all celebrate various days throughout the year ~ From Valentine’s Day to Mother’s Day to Father’s Day to Daughter’s Day and so on...

But when it comes to World Mental Health Day, we become somewhat pensive, We Pause, We Ignore and in fact at times even question whether we would want to know about it since it may not concern us. It is true, we wouldn’t want to get involved with World Cancer Day or World Diabetes Day or any such day which involves a physical or mental condition with which we had nothing to do with. It may even turnout to be a bad omen if we would do so…

This itself is our thought process as a society. We accept only what we would like to believe in and most of the time we are reactive instead of being proactive. We try to cure illnesses instead of trying to prevent them.

Especially when it comes to Mental Health, the taboo, the stigma attached to it even in urban population is so strong that help doesn’t reach the person as fast. Even the highly educated feel ashamed to discuss about it, let alone deal with it. There is a silver lining to all this and compared to the past, there has been lot of improvement. But we also need to understand that this dark cloud which has a silver lining has grown big.

The past one and half years of Covid has completely changed the way we live and it has corely affected our basic survival instincts, leading to more people feeling anxious, fearful, insecure, remorse, not in control and more. But most people are so busy processing what they are feeling or what they are going through, that the ones who may be needing urgent professional help are not reaching out for help.

This is where those who are close to them come in picture. The well-being of a mentally affected patient is as much as his responsibility as that of his close circle. The person may not be in a position to understand or comprehend what he is going through. The signs of needing help from a qualified psychiatrist or counsellor may be very subtle. We can compare these to the subtle signs before a person develops cancer or thyroid or diabetes or heart attack. It’s there but not visible.

It would be worth noting and understanding that for a person who is going through mental illness the symptoms can be as physical, as experienced in any other physical ailment. Just that, unlike a normal physical illness it is not clearly visible due to lack of physical damage. The person may be smiling, chatty, looking normal yet may be breaking down internally.

With the improvement in mental health facilities, it would be best if a periodic mental health checkup is included, just as we do our annual checkups. Also, emotional wellbeing can be greatly improved with better and open communication between family members, close friends, peers, coworkers, groups, etc. Thanks to too much dependency on social media for our elevated fake happiness quotient due to which real relations, their sanctity, their inter-twining of ideas, concepts, opinions seem secondary. This pandemic has led to lot of distress but it has also provided all of us ample opportunity to work upon what is important to us for a fuller happier life.

Only when the mind is at ease can we all experience real bliss and happiness. Not all mental illness cases require medication or lifelong medication. But handling it at the right time, under the right hands can really create life altering positive impression.

I would wish to end by saying...

Happy we should be ~ if our minds sought our attention,

So that Happier we can be to have ~ our Mind, Body & Soul team back in action.

Blog Written By

Deepa Mandal

Founder, Reachout Foundation Mumbai