Mental health is as important as physical

I’m reading a lot about mental health and depression since yesterday. The heartbreaking demise of one of the Bollywood heroes who committed suicide recently left the entire world in shock. Everyone is talking about how painful it is to face hardships alone. One study suggests that if someone can speak to the person who is about to commit suicide then it would take one-hundredth of a second to change his mind. 98% of survivors regret their decision. How heart-wrenching it is to believe that one such talented superstar who pursued mechanical engineering from Delhi School of Engineering did not have that one single person to talk at that very moment. He didn’t have anyone in his life who could give him 1/100th of a second at the time he was about to hang himself. How pity! Reports of him being bullied, sabotaged, and succumb to death (suicide) have also started surfacing. The mental health situation in India is more alarming than we think because the awareness level associated with mental health is very less. On the contrary, a person with mental illness is often termed as lunatics. An estimate by WHO says mental illness makes about 15% of the total disease conditions around the world. The same estimate also suggests that India has one of the largest populations affected by mental illness. As a result, the WHO has labeled India as the world’s ‘most depressing country’. Strange that in a country where more than 50% of its population below the age of 25 and more than 65% below the age of 35 rule the country’s consumption story, there is no prescribed/strategic methodology to deal with such situations. Dealing with one’s mental condition is everyone’s responsibility that starts with family, employers, community, and society. The mental health situation in India demands active policy interventions and resource allocation by relevant stakeholders. To reduce the stigma around mental health, we need measures to train and sensitize the community/society. This can happen only when we have a persistent nationwide effort to educate our society about mental diseases. Additionally, mental illness should also be put under the ambit of life insurance. This will help people to see mental illness with the same lens as they use for physical diseases and who knows then probably there will be fewer victims and more winners!