Destigmatizing Mental Health
[Music]
psychology
and psychiatry the disciplines
what we call today as mental health are
relatively new
in the world of modern sciences
only a century back
these branches started in europe and
then spread all over the world
but for asian countries especially the
indian
peninsula the branches of psychology
psychiatry mental health
were integrally woven
with culture with spirituality
and with the traditional wisdom
many of the religions that
rooted in this soil the vedanta
philosophy the buddhist thought the
jainism
even the sikh religion all religions
talked about
self-development self-enlightenment
and integrated the principles of what we
call
self-development and self-acceptance in
their own philosophical
teachings and their needs
as far as mental disorders were
concerned
there were traditional healers and the
society was
also much more prominent it gave
a certain place of dignity to people
who had physical disabilities mental
disabilities
and even chronic mental illnesses
there was a widespread acceptance in
this song
the modern psychiatry or mental health
came to this country
along with the british rulers they
brought the model of
modern medicine and this model
essentially was
a biomedical model the physical part of
it
was very easily accepted because it had
a power
of quick symptom alleviation
but the treatments on the treatments on
mental disorders
were also in their infancy there in the
western world as well
so the model that was brought in this
country was that of mental asylums
segregating people with mental illnesses
in hospitals that were akin
to jails this model of segregation had
no other substitute
so the culture and the society in this
country
had to accept it because it had no other
better alternative but till the time
it was unavoidable taking treatment
of modern psychiatry was not considered
a very favorable thing
so psychiatry psychology and mental
health
faced two problems one was
acceptance of the medical fraternity
body and bodily medicine was given its
due respect
but not mind because that dichotomy
was inherent in the system itself and
the society
did not favor did not accept
this particular model of treating
mentally ill people
and therefore in this country of 131
crores
population even today how many trained
psychiatrists that we have just over
seven thousand
and how many psychologists we have some
more
thousands but that’s it
the problem with this particular model
of segregating mentally ill individuals
was
that it alienated the society and
secondly
the whole outlook was very restricted
the concept of mental health was equated
to treatment and that to symptomatic
treatment
of mental disorders today
when we think about mental health in the
21st century perspective
we say that mental health has three
layers the first layer of course is that
of disorders
but the treatment needs to extend itself
out of symptomatic relief to
partnership with that person suffering
from mental illness
participation of his entire family in
the process because we
in our country have family support
which is a resource which is lying there
in abundance
and needs to be utilized for the benefit
of that person and for the family
and therefore participation of this
family structure the social structure
in total rehabilitation of that person
becomes very important similarly the
support groups
people with mentally people with mental
illness coming together
their families expressing together and
working
in solidarity becomes a very important
aspect
of treatment of disorders where
everybody participates
the second segment that is of this
stress
today in the consumeristic society
individual aspirations are flying
and people are thinking more and more in
a self-centered narcissistic way
falling prey to a lot of short-term
glaciers
and the gap between aspiration and
performance
between performance and the prevailing
situation
gives rise to a lot of distress and
distress
is a crucible for disorders
unfortunately
most of our clinical psychiatrists are
trained
to treat disorders but
treating distress requires a different
type
of approach a more psychological
psychosocial approach
sadly a lot of our colleagues are
lacking in this
this is where in fact the distress
management
that is where we need to focus because
distress is prevalent in
all age groups and then comes
development at every age
every stage people require
two types of inputs one how to make
their coping effective
and secondly how to gel productivity
with happiness and if
the education of development the
psychological development
is given properly then of course the
distress will be low
and if the stress is low the disorders
will
remain under considerable limits
so the holistic approach of looking
towards mental health
covers disorders distress
and development now as it is apparent
that this whole gamut of mental health
therefore
is not limited to only mental health
professionals
and the challenge therefore is that
unless we all come together
we will not be able to be stigmatized
mental health
so let’s come to this important point as
to what
is stigma stigma
is essentially a rigid negative belief
that is held steadfastly irrespective of
a lot of data that is there against it
and even if it is very self-defeating
and counterproductive
in its nature and
stigmas generally are a problem with any
society
in terms of social advancement it’s an
obstacle
for any kind of open view point of
looking at a particular concept
in terms of mental health the stigma
operates at two levels
one is stark and the other is settled
starkville means that oh
all psychiatric illnesses are lunacy
these are mad people and the doctors
of these mad people only give sleeping
medicines
that’s the kind of a stark stigma it
is based on ignorance but
even if i have access to knowledge i
don’t use it
that’s when it is called stigma and
you have a very subtle stigma the subtle
stigma means
that i am in charge of my mind and if
there is a problem
that i have in my mind i will solve it
and if i require help that means that i
am weak
and my mind is weak so labeling
yourself as a weak minded person
whenever you are facing distress is also
a subtle type of stigma
so the rigid negative belief is to be
replaced
by a flexible healthy positive belief
that’s destigmatization so what does it
mean
it means that we need to tell the
society the people the families
that your mind and your body are
integral parts of your existence
and as your bodies can face problems so
can mind
and there are ways to deal with it
scientific ways to deal with it
also if you work on
your thinking emotions and behavior
in many many scientific validated ways
you can be a better human being
you can really link others interest
with self interest that is
destigmatization
but it’s a process it’s such a long
process that it has no
end because beliefs don’t change
easily you require a collective effort
although the mental health professionals
have to take
a lead in these efforts it’s important
that the community is linked with it
is related to it at
our experimental laboratory called
institute for
psychological health for last three
decades
all of us have been functioning to
find out can we destigmatize mental
health
and we found out of our own experiences
that it’s not
only the psychologists and psychiatrists
and counselors but members of the
society
if they are linked to your cause
then a lot of initiatives can be taken
because unless you are
a team you can’t make a social impact
so for making a social impact team
effort is very important and secondly
you need to have
an umbrella of services so
and in our center or in our
experiment we decided to give services
to almost all strata of people or age
groups of people
and we started reaching out to society
with a lot of developmental initiatives
projects that ran for years together
and of course distress alleviating
activities including continuous training
and development programs for
all strata of the society so we tried to
cover
the disorder distress and development
segment
through all these activities and we
found
that unless you are consistent unless
you are very creative
and unless you go on and on and on
despite
the response and the resistance you
can’t
really change the belief but once you
can
then things start changing society first
looks at you with some
kind of indifference then curiosity and
then starts aligning itself with your
cause
today many times we see
people coming to our place are institute
with a variety of needs and those needs
mind you
are not only the troubling symptoms of
mental disorders
today an executive an entrepreneur comes
to us
a student comes to us for future
guidance artist comes to us for
development
of his talents athlete comes because he
wants to
improve on his merits so when all these
people start coming to you when you have
not only addicts people suffering from
schizophrenia bipolar disorder
but parents teachers
entrepreneurs everybody coming to a
place the place
becomes a common normal place
it doesn’t remain a place where mad
people
come for treatment and that my friends
is
destigmatization
and what we have learned on our way
throughout our work
some important messages first that one
has to go
out of the clinical paradigm
it’s not only writing prescriptions it’s
not only taking a 45
minute session with your client but it’s
walking that
extra mind with the community and
when you go out of that clinical
paradigm then you really start
aligning yourself with the social
cultural and emotional realities
of the community that you are working
with
sometimes you will see a need in the
community quite ahead of your times
and therefore there will be initiatives
which
won’t give you response this has
happened with us time and again
but we have learned our lesson and we
have persisted
consistently and creatively and it’s the
umbrella that works
if you want to make a social impact you
need to have
an umbrella of services given by a
comprehensive team
of committed individuals and then only
we can add to the emotional immunity
of our society the concept of emotional
immunity has now become more important
in the post-quran world
because corona has taught us so many
lessons
and it has taught us that having a sound
mind is as important
perhaps more important in addition to
having a sound body
in these times one important
theme related to mental health is going
to be resilience
will have to be a resilient world
culture and for that we will require
a scientifically validated mental health
paradigm
unless we have that then there would be
people
and agencies that would spread
pseudoscientific
pseudo-philosophical pseudo-religious
paradigms
and vulnerable society can fall prey to
it
so it’s very important that mental
health doesn’t
remain a concern related to only a group
of professionals
but becomes a kind of
a universal goal for everybody
sociologists warn that for any culture
the post pandemic types are very crucial
on one side people would become
more sensitive about hygiene and health
but on the other side
because of the economic setbacks the
social disintegration people will face
a lot of challenges and therefore there
are going to be these
two key words writing and resilience
the social writing behavior starts in a
distressed mind
and it’s the rational mind that gives
rise to resilience
therefore mental health today
has come to the central stage of our
society and culture
if we want to have a more resilient
world then there is
no substitute to rationality aldous
huxley
talked about the brave new world
we need to work on making
a empathic rational new world
if we do that then that would be the
greatest greatest greatest learning that
this
species would have learned out of these
difficult times
thank you