As an Indian woman, I have witnessed the pervasive silence and stigma surrounding mental health in our society all my life.
Representational image. (Creative Commons)
Trigger Warning: Contains descriptions of mental health trauma and suicide. Some of the language and phraseology used are not the author’s words but the narration of the popular use of language for people living with mental illnesses.
Suicide. As far back as I can remember, I had first heard that word said about a young man who had died of “it” in the government accommodation allotted to my father as his residence when I was four or five. (PS: Back then, the verb I and everyone used for it was not ‘dead’).
I was a smart child and even after the constant evasive answers to my persistent but vague questions about the word by both my parents, I had presumed that generally, whatever people don’t want to talk about readily must not be essential, good or worth talking about. That is what consists of cultural conditioning in mental health and suicide prevention taboos.
The discomfort around the word, though, stayed with me as something bad, something harrowing that must never be “committed” or named.
Years later, a friend, a medical student, died the same way. He was one of the most happy-go-lucky people I had ever met at that stage; he was friendly, warm, and charming. This one affected me worse than ever because I knew this person but was too young to understand mental health issues and their implications still fully.
The sensationalism of the incident in the local media and small-town gossip overwhelmed my understanding of what could have been done or could be done in the future. Lots of “whys” remained.
During my Master’s in Literature, I realised all my favourite famous authors, mostly women, had all dealt with various mental health issues, and strangely, all of them had died of suicide. (Virginia Woolf, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath). But thankfully, I was mature enough than most people my age by then and never romanticised it or considered it cowardice.
As I went through the biographies of each one of them, I could understand their struggles with mental health.
Years later, as I struggled with postpartum depression, I realised that all of us, every single human being, especially a woman, go through stress triggers and low mental health phases. Strangely, sometimes, the very things that should be the reason for joy and solace lead you into the darkness of mental illness and depression.
Sometimes, apparently, happy events/triggers like a new job, new relationship, parenthood, or change of location can also pull you down instead of pushing you forward; these can be all trauma responses.
Imagine if apparently “good” changes could lead to so much misery. What could “bad” changes like the death of a loved one, the ending of a relationship, professional distress or chronic depression could do to our minds?
Only those of us with support, awareness and care survive, survive better and seek help; self-help is always the first step. But in a society like ours with so much stigma about mental illness and mental health, in a society that conditions us to hush up matters and never speak openly about our issues, people live suffering silently in depression for years. Others are not only apathetic about them but accelerate their misery and loneliness, sometimes even preventing the sufferer from seeking/getting any help.
I also understood that mental health issues were a vast grey area in a society like ours. Only a handful are aware, and very few show any sensitivity towards the survivor, more so if it is a woman. Most of the time, it is dismissed as an “anger” issue or bad attitude problem, and the mental and emotional suffering of the victim is overlooked and, sadly, often even made fun of as “drama”.
Only one question keeps coming back: Why is this powerlessness? Why this helplessness?
As an Indian woman, I’ve witnessed the pervasive silence and stigma surrounding mental health in our society all my life. My journey as a survivor and advocate has led me to recognise the urgent need to do something about this at a large scale.
While Women’s Day is celebrated annually with salon discounts and sales, the conversation rarely extends to the mental health of women even if it might reach “full body checkup discount.”, which is definitely essential but technically isn’t our mind also part of the “full body?”.
I have now attempted to initiate a multi-dimensional conversation about mental health, specifically tailored to the experiences of Indian women. I hope to inspire others to join the movement and effect meaningful change.
“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” — Ryunosuke Satoro.
I hope my ideas resonate and this initiative for mental health finds support, listening and speaking from all stakeholders in India and globally.
(The writer is the co-founder of Bharat Dialogues, academician, trained mental health counsellor and sexual wellness coach. Views are personal.)
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