Beware! Binge-watching your fav show likely to cause mental disorder
Several new entertainment mobile application services that provide subscription-based TV episodes and movies have gained momentum among bingewatchers who remain hooked to the screen till late night. But this addiction is causing indirect damage to the mental health conditions leading to depression and anxiety. A senior doctor said research has shown that bingewatchers are most vulnerable to mental health issues and cause insomnia or sleeping disorder which ultimately further adds up to the mental health condition.
In order to avoid boredom, people subscribe to these entertainments applications to which they get addicted and this keeps them awake till late nights causing sleeping disorder.
A psychiatrist said that he gets two to four patient daily who complain of suffering from mood swings and anxiety due to watching videos overnight. “The patients coming for counselling say they are addicted to entertainment applications due to which they get limited hours to sleep which led them to fall in depression and anxiety due to work pressure,” said Dr Suresh Shetty, a psychiatrist.
Recently, the health survey report of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) revealed that more than 30 per cent of the citizens are diagnosed with a mental illness such as depression, anxiety at various civic-run hospitals.
“As per the statistics, from October 2015 to September 2017,5,59,954 number of patients have visited these hospitals and out of which,1,74,379 complained of mental disorder mostly of sleeping disorder, depression, anxiety,” said a senior doctor.
Dr Sagar Mundada, a psychiatrist, said that research has shown that binge-watchers are most vulnerable to mental health issues. When a person spends too much time devouring season after season in a short period of time on the small screen of mobile at a time, the person gets anxious. “Neuron-chemically, it increases the level of adrenaline and cortisol that actually amplifies the stress level. It is also being called post-binge-watching depression," added Dr Mundada.
It is often been seen among patients that they get to sink into the characters on the screen that leads to psychological disintegration. "At night, humans sleep to provide relief to our brain but when we keep watching movies and series on a small scene of mobiles, it reverses the body system making the brain extremely weak," said Dr Shubhangi R Parkar, Head of the Department of Psychiatry of KEM Hospital.