Mental health - some thoughts

Disclaimer : I am not an expert on the subject  - these are my thoughts as a lay person. 

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Last week's news has hit me very hard and I am not being able to forget it and the discussions around it that easily. Because it has triggered some bad memories - the ones I would rather not remember. We won't know the exact specifications of what happened in that particular case until it is solved. But there was such a deluge of sudden discussion about mental health, professional and personal lives that it made me think about some of the following:

1) Everybody has suddenly woken up to the fact that mental health is important and people should be helped. But how many of us are trained to spot mental illness and give first aid and then to seek appropriate medical help? We are taught to give first aids for wounds and injuries and know that medical help should be sought. But what first aids can be given for mental health? Has anybody ever taught us scientifically?

2) Taboo around mental health - Even in this age, there are people who deny treatment to their family members in need of medical help citing stupid reasons such as "if people came to know that there is a mentally ill person in the family that will diminish the marriage prospects of their siblings". :/People will rush to hospital if they have a physical ailment and do everything to treat it and keep healthy. If it is a family member we ensure that they get appropriate treatment. Then why is it so hard for people when it comes to mental illness? Is it not inhuman to refuse medical treatment in the name of family honor and leave a human being to a terrible plight?

3) Myths about the mind - Mind is somehow treated as a mythical being, which has no connection to our bodies (as if it is hovering above our heads all the time with a magical staff) and hence people believe that any "error" to it can be self corrected or "corrected" by rituals, cult activities etc. How many of us were (again) taught scientifically about what mind actually is? How many of us were told as children or students that mind has a connection to your body's state and it has a physical basis? (Since I am no expert in that field I won't write too much.)

4) Now about the discussions around professional and personal factors affecting mental health. Everybody acknowledges that happenings in personal and professional life can affect mental health of a person. As a person in academia I know what that feels like to have extreme stress from various sources.

a) Pressure to live life as other people desire. And those others who may not even be aware fully of the intricacies of your profession and what you want from life as a person! The ones exerting these kinds of pressures may not be even aware of the stress they might be causing on the one affected. It could be because of generation gap - that a certain generation feels that there is nothing like depression or mental stress.

b) If you are in academia, there is the constant pressure of publish or perish. The discussions around how the actor lost some 6 films has been nagging me. So, if the N number of papers on which I or any academic has worked never see the light of the world, does it mean the end?

The last one is hitting me harder because I cannot stop thinking that, if at some point a person loses everything they loved or wanted to do, because of pressure from different sets and the different sets are not willing to understand what the correct situation is, but judge you, isolate you anyway and the stress affects your mental health and you have nobody to support you (because those who are supposed to support you might be the ones stressing you out), you yourself cannot stay strong anymore, what are you supposed to do?

It is only when some terrible news appears that everybody suddenly wakes up to the fact that mental health is important. Then after a week or two everybody forgets about it. Then a section of people wonder what is the "reason" behind it and wonder despite financial, social whatever status why people have things to "worry" about. Reason or no reason, it is true there are large and small mental health issues. Physiological, environmental, stress etc factors can affect mental health. People need to be scientifically made aware of it and the seriousness of it. Otherwise every time someone suicides we can search for "reasons" in vain and lament "oh I should have helped". It won't be a cake walk to help anybody with severe mental illness. But that will be better than losing someone to it. We need proper scientific awareness.

For example when Covid-19 started there were a whole lot of fake whatsapp forwards about how to "treat" and stay immune from it. But as time progressed, even within a shot span people have atleast become aware of the correct scientific basic measures ought to be taken and followed. (Again the same pandemic has affected the mental health of a lot of people, but many times it goes undetected.) So it is not impossible to create correct awareness and make people understand. Yes it takes many many iterations and explanations to get some points to people. The same is possible for mental health, if only we stop treating our mind as a magical mythical, disconnected-from-the-body being and stop believing in false things like only 10% of our brain is used.

I am not an expert on physiology, psychiatry, psychology or mental health. But I want to learn the basic things to identify a situation if needed and be able to help myself and others (like how we learn about first aid even if we are not medical specialists). And that needs proper training. We and the coming generations should be made scientifically aware of it.