Why Is It Imperative To Beat The Stigma Around Mental Health?

When you get the flu, do you have to beg for acceptance? Or when you are diagnosed with cancer, do you have to fight to be taken seriously? No right? But mental health issue has to fight all these battles apart from the one that it already is- an unending fight with the self.

Recently, I came across an Indian singer Honey Singh’s problematic comment on mental health issues. He compared anxiety and depression to the flu. He advised people to not visit a psychiatrist if they are diagnosed with mental health issues. “Talking to your mom and listening to her jokes and songs will heal everything,” he said. Moreover, he compared anxiety with the uneasiness we feel before exams.

Honey Singh’s comment doesn’t come to me as a shock because he is just one among the many who trivialise mental health issues. “You are just sad”, “Go for a walk”, “You are being lazy” and how can I forget “You will be alright.” Comments like these are thrown on your face when you approach them for help. And then when things get worse, people say, “Why didn’t you tell us?”

I have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. It started in my childhood and persisted till my adulthood, getting worse every year. I sought help in my adulthood after battling with an “unknown” feeling for years. Believe me, it was not as easy as a flu. I used to cry on small issues, I used to be suicidal when I didn’t even know what were their consequences. I just wanted to escape everything. People, including my parents, often interpreted my thoughts and actions as my inability to deal with challenges. But I had one question - no matter how scared I am, I can’t avoid waking up in the morning right?

Because I didn’t seek help when I should have, I attempted suicide more than twice. I am anxious throughout the day. Even nights are not spared as they are besmeared with nightmares, hot flushes, sweating (in winters) and anxiety.

But all these battles that people with mental health issues fight are trivialised by people like Honey Singh into something that can easily be conquered. Some even go on to say that depression is just a lie that people say to seek attention.

Why have mental health issues become a social issue? Why do people with mental health illnesses have to fight battles with stigmas around the illness? Just why is mental health issue a stigma?

Mental Health And Stigma

Mental health illness is an issue that mars men and women equally. Whenever women with mental health issues open up, they are perceived as weak and pretentious. And same goes with men too. This is despite the fact that suicide rates among men and women have been rising each year. Women are diagnosed with anxiety and depression twice as much as men. 12 per cent of women are dealing with depression and phobias as opposed to six per cent of men. When we see the suicide rate, 118 thousand men and 45 thousand women died by suicide in the year 2021.

Why aren’t these data eye-openers? Why don’t we consider that people with mental health issues require a similar kind of care and help as any other fatal disease?

In our society, having mental health illness is perceived as a shame for the person and their family. I remember how my mother always cuts me off in the middle when I try to explain to people that I am dealing with depression. In fact, if you remember a scene from the movie Dear Zindagi, Jahangir Khan (played by Shah Rukh Khan) also said how being a psychiatrist is a shame for the family. He said that he had to pretend to be a gynaecologist to escape the shaming of society.

Dear society, it is just not fair to add to the battles that people with mental health issues are facing. You need to educate yourself more on the subject and why it is of utmost priority. Sometimes, the struggle with society becomes harder than the struggle with the illness itself. Consequently, people cage their feelings in a jar which one day suffocates them to death.

Do you remember Sylvia Plath’s Bell Jar? She uses the metaphor of a jar to represent the desolation, despair and distorted perspective of the world that people with mental health illness face. But if there is no one to open that jar, if there is no one to understand their pain and if there is no one to lend a hand and show the way out, they will rot inside a closed jar.

The irony is that every one of us is aware that anxiety, panic attacks and suicide exist. We all know that these issues can grip people anytime. Do you know why? Because we all have opinions on it and we can’t opine on something that we don’t know about. However, society chooses silence over acceptance. The term “pagal” is perceived so negatively and used so casually that its seriousness is lost. But you know what, a person is not mad because they are diagnosed with a mental health issue. They are mad because they refuse to accept it as an issue.

Views expressed by the author are their own.

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