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