Mental health has become a buzzword of sorts in the past few years. But that is not true in a lot of South Asian counties. I come from India, so I will talk about the stigma around emotional wellness that has plagued Indian students, and the society in general, for decades. While most mental health issues are treatable, widespread stigma against mental illness means Indians who need help often get neither diagnosed nor treated.
There’s a reason we don’t talk about mental health, and it is the fact that we don’t like to talk about ourselves, our inner fears and desires, for we like to be accepted and liked and loved. Modern Indian society – with its propensity for drunken conversations, superficial humor, smart repartee, a sense of irony and detachment – prizes perfection, emotional numbness, and looks down upon vulnerability. So even though you’re with people, you’re alone, and despite having a good time, you don’t feel safe. You feel left out, as if something’s missing.
We need to have something like ‘Mental Health Week’, a week dedicated to raising awareness about the true and current state of mental health around the world, for something that is such a common occurrence. The goal of this week is to garner attention and support to alleviate the plight of the millions of people in India, and around the world living in quiet suffering, with illnesses ranging from anxiety and depression to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, to name a few.
Here are some shocking facts about mental health in India, and why we need to start this conversation:
The Indian government estimates that 6-7% of the population suffer from major to minor mental health issues. That’s approximately 70 million Indians. This number is increasing every year.
As per some estimates, a fifth of Indian adolescents have emotional, learning, or developmental issues, while an eighth have serious mental health issues.
Only 1-2% of the Indian health budget is allotted to mental health, despite mental illness accounting for over 15% of health disorders.
Due to stigmas and misinformation, people in need of help are rarely able to access it. Additionally, despite the huge number of people who require mental health attention, India only has 3,500 trained psychiatrists and even fewer psychologists.
India accounts for more suicide than most other countries. Suicide is considered a criminal act under the Indian Penal Code. This, combined with rampant stigma, means many suicide attempts go unreported, and suicidal individuals fear seeking treatment.
Despite receiving most media attention, farmer and student suicides are far rarer than suicides caused by poverty and a lack of access to treatment.
On 25th November, 2016 a film called Dear Zindagi (zindagi means life) released, amid a lot a promotional events and discussions about what the film represents.
The premise of Dear Zindagi is vulnerability. Rather, how each one of us go out of our way to tell ourselves, “Nope, you're not vulnerable”. At its heart, the film is about a young, female cinematographer, Kaira, and her everyday struggles in getting through life. Kaira isn’t perfect, and the film doesn’t justify her behavior or actions. She acts on her impulses. She hurts others. She doesn’t know why she does what she does. Then, at some point in the film, we are introduced to Dr. Jug, a chic therapist who helps Kaira deal with her inner demons of shame and guilt of abandonment, of rejection, of not feeling loved.
Touted as the first Bollywood film on mental health, Dear Zindagi carried a ‘pretty heavy responsibility’. And did it do justice to it? Yes and no.
YES:
First of all, it is so heartening and refreshing to know that a mainstream film like Dear Zindagi chooses to talk about mental health, and does so in a manner that doesn’t trivialize its finer details. Dear Zindagi also talks about something else that’s usually either brushed under the carpet, or dressed in terms of perfection: the family. And, if you look at it, these two (mental health issues and family) aren’t dissimilar: Because if you can’t discuss the former, you can’t speak against the latter. At its core, this film asks several uncomfortable questions about living with people who make you feel unsafe and insecure.
In India, we go to the movies not just to hangout or have a good time, but also to feel something deeply human. I hope this film will introduce people to something that’s slowly going out of fashion - empathy. Because we are, at the end of the day, a star struck nation. And after watching this film, maybe a lot of people will be encouraged to confide in someone.
The film obviously does get some things wrong, but I’m glad that it exists, because it brings out many stories and truths behind texts not sent, calls not returned, confessions not made.
NO:
In parts, this film dresses up the ‘pretty heavy responsibility’ of being a film about mental health with fashionable clothes, heavily art directed scenes, and a profusion of clichés. If the director had seriously tasked herself with the idea of making mental health a conversation in urban India, there were a million ways in which she could have done it. She could have done it by depicting the tortured path to recovery like Silver Linings Playbook, or with a fantastic plotline like Black Swan, which flirts with the boundaries between competitiveness and schizophrenia, something that the Indian youth faces in different degrees today.
Mental health is a dark and unchartered territory in India, which desperately needs dialogue, attention, coverage, and freedom from the crushing stigma. The role that literature and movies can play in this conversation is enormous. This film had its reasons for not being true to reality – the presence of a global superstar like Shahrukh Khan, wanting to be commercially viable, target all kind of audiences, etc.
This film will shine even the narrowest beam of light, bring the tiniest change in perception, and cause a tiny ripple in the Indian psyche. But I do believe it’s the start of bringing out realism in cinema.
**This piece by Nidhi has inspired our Things That Matter team to have our own Mental Health Awareness Week, here at Clark. Throughout this week (April 16-22, 2017), we will be featuring daily posts that discuss mental health issues.
