Heres why what you know about Mental Health may be wrong

[Music]

[Applause]

i would like you to imagine this for

once

let’s say you went through a bad breakup

a really bad one

and you felt extremely low and sad after

that breakup

now usually like most of us do after a

bad breakup we go on to google and try

to find about

the reasons of why we feel the way we

feel and try to also find out more

answers

in the middle of this let’s say you came

across a blog that claimed to be

a mental health expert blog and on that

blog

you saw a list of symptoms which they

claim that if you might continue to feel

the way you are

then you will end up having these

symptoms some of the symptoms said

that you might end up having

irritability

loss of appetite sleeplessness

nightmares and an extreme case you might

end up committing suicide

now for once imagine

in that mental state how exactly would

you feel

how exactly would this entire

information

make you feel at that time

would you feel helpless would you feel

confused

would you feel scared that’s exactly how

most of my clients felt

when the first time came to my office

right after reading about all such

things

available about mental illness and

mental health

online with the easy accessibility

of information on mental health in

today’s time the tendency to have

information that is false misleading

and also creating rumors becomes high

in fact for once even if i say that some

of those informations

are true then one of the major dangers

come from

how a reader approaches this information

a lot of readers have shown the tendency

to either

overestimate what they are going through

or either underestimate their own signs

and symptoms

now from this i would like to share a

very personal example

and in fact also highlight very own

concern that i’ve had

as a mental health expert so about a

year back i joined the instagram family

i was really excited because i was

planning to do a research where i wanted

to see

what are the psychological effects of

using instagram on its users

now meanwhile i was there and i was

focusing on my research

i came across a number of accounts that

really surprised me

those accounts were taking up

responsibility of disseminating

mental health related information across

a number of followers

in fact so many followers that i was

amazed to see that if

these many followers were really with a

true right kind of information

giving person then probably results

would have been different

now after that my amazement didn’t stop

that

i was even more surprised to see that

these people who were claiming

to be sharing the most authentic

information on mental health

were actually spreading the

misinformation

or at least the wrong information

furthermore they were doing it under the

labels like

mental health service providers and

mental health advocates

which of course at the surface level

were increasing their authenticity

but they want to truly registered or

checked on

now after this particular incident i

decided to go on google

just my inner sheer curiosity and

tied in to see that what are truly the

most authentic

mental health instagram handles that one

should follow

if they’re wanting to seek more right

kind of information

i was amazed to see that i roughly got

30 odd accounts that were told

that are the best ones to follow

now why exactly 30 number isn’t the best

number

and i didn’t had a great expression to

it

that’s because today currently in india

as of 2021 we have about

400 million social media

users out of which even if i imagine

that 10 percent of those social media

users

were disseminating wrong information

from their instagram handles

then that means that almost 40 million

accounts are

active at this point in time who are

spreading

wrong information about mental illnesses

and mental health

in fact as a result of these

unauthorized

unauthentic and unreliable sources

there has been serious effects on

people’s psyches and mental health

in fact it is far more dangerous because

people who are going through content

from these platforms

either end up having far more

stigmatization

or stigmatic thoughts about what mental

illness is

or if themselves they are going through

a mental illness then they feel far more

vulnerable

and sometimes weak now this brings me to

a very valid question

are we all trying to fight stigma

or are we actually the creators of

stigma

through social media platforms

now while i put this question forward

let me simplify it a bit

a psychology thought is quite famous in

fact it’s

said a lot of times when we study

psychology

and it says that reality is based on our

own

individual perception and our perception

is based on the information that we get

from our environment now just imagine

that the environment from where we are

getting maximum information

at least in the area of mental health

are these various social media platforms

just imagine the amount of impact

that these kind of misleading

information can have on so many people

out there

and what kind of reality are they

forming about what really mental

illnesses are like

i will make it easy for all of you and

give you two researches which actually

sound super interesting

and actually made me even more intrigued

to work in the area of cyberbullying

one of those were the works of governor

in 2002

along with other researchers he gave

this cultivation theory and tried to

apply it in order to

study the behaviors of human he found

out that those people who actually live

through these platforms simply saying

that they understand their lives

realities

through whatever these platforms give in

the form of information

that is what becomes their ultimate

truth and reality

in real life now imagine

that in the current scenario the chances

for you to actually go and meet somebody

who is actually going through a mental

illness are quite low

in fact that’s quite true for most of us

because some of us

aren’t that privileged to actually see

what mental illness really feels like

and what exactly the journey is like

therefore most of us

highly rely on sources like these to

understand about

what exactly mental health and mental

illness is

how depending on these media platforms i

cannot forget

how on media platforms mental illnesses

are portrayed

often they are portrayed as people who

are either criminals

or are murderers or are vindictive

or are trying to find out vengeance and

that’s about it

in fact sometimes when i try to find out

what else can they be doing apart from

this in the media platform

it’s very hard to see that they have

been given any other thing

that they are seeking from life now

let’s just pause there for a bit

and take on another stride of what

albert bandura found

through his social learning theory

albert bandura through his social

learning theory

again did a very interesting experiment

rather a research

he said that the people or these media

platforms through which people get their

information

had the power to reinforce certain

social conventions

about mental health and also about how

people who have mental illness should be

treated

now if i consider that and also consider

what cultivation theory had to say that

our reality is built on that

then it’s quite a scary road why

because whenever i switch on a

television i always see

that always a villain in the movie or a

criminal on the news channel

is always shown to have some kind of

psychopathic issue

or is either shown as a psychopath

or some people who have mental illnesses

are actually shown as people who are

either devils whose ultimate goal is

destruction

vengeance and death as if they have

nothing else to do in life

but just do this what kind of odd

reality are we all creating

what kind of emotions are we creating in

our audiences

what kind of content are we really

producing

now this brings us to some very very

important and valid questions but before

i say that

there’s a thought that comes in my mind

and i actually got it

from one of the researchers from rose

and filo

rose and filo actually did a very

interesting research

from which they gave a very very

powerful statement

in fact when i speak about those

statements i actually legit get

group spuns in my hands they said

that the media representations or what

mental illnesses are really like

have a potential to override the already

existing notions that we have

about who exactly these mentally ill

people are

and how exactly it is to be with them

so let’s say that even if you have a

very positive idea about

what mental illnesses are or what people

who face them

are really going through or are as a

person

if you constantly keep watching such

media content

or keep reading misinformation you will

ultimately start seeing it

as a reality are we really understanding

how dangerously we are moving ahead

to an area or to an era where there’s

more confusion

and more dissemination of mental health

information

where there is no check or authenticity

check

on what we are taking inside our

realities

now pausing there comes a big question

a very big question is what are the

roles and responsibility of all of us

right here

what are the roles and responsibility of

all of us as

readers of these contents what are the

roles and responsibilities

of you and me as social media content

creators

what are the roles and responsibility i

may ask about various media houses

and what are the roles and

responsibilities of

mental health workers like me

the answer is quite simple in fact

quite straightforward as social media

content creators and media house experts

or even media creators

we should stop stigmatizing

words and issues which are related to

mental health and mental illnesses

we should stop portraying every criminal

as always having some kind of

mental illness or trying to portray

every villain

as having some kind of traumatic past

and always trying to do

something that is in relations with

creating more

negative feedbacks and negative ideas

about what mental illness

is or what a mentally ill person looks

like

we should stop actually propagating and

relating various mental disorders

through our media platforms

and trying to always give them a sexist

angle

for instance i usually see that in a lot

of portrayals of media

we have seen already in a lot of movies

that men are portrayed as somebody

who’ve

always had some childhood trauma as a

result of which

they end up having psychosis or some

childhood dramatic

mind and memories on the other side

usually in movies and other social media

platforms i see that women are portrayed

as those

who are oppressed and due to constant

oppression

they end up having sexual dysfunctional

disorders

i think it’s time that we should take

some responsibility of the kind of

information that we are portraying

we should stop propagating and over

simplifying celebrity

suicides the way we have done in past

we should stop propagating and

glorifying

misinformation in the same direction

we should stop and always read the kind

of content that we are forwarding across

our friends and families

or we are putting it across our social

media handles

and finally we should stop

self-diagnosing ourselves

because self-diagnosis is not the right

thing

and diagnosis is

a thing or rather diagnosis

is a privilege that comes with a degree

and that privilege is only in the hand

of a mental health expert

thank you so much