On the e-book 'Young Mental Health' - The Hindu,

On the e-book 'Young Mental Health'

Anwesh Pokkuluri
JUNE 23, 2020 11:41 IST



Reach out to your friends 

Photo Credit:  VSanandhakrishna

By talking about what is bothering us, we take away its power to control us. 

Weeks before the Supreme Court’s landmark judgement on Section 377, a young man shared his journey, now published in the e-book 

‘Young Mental Health’

Trigger warning: Suicidal ideation

The first time I came out to a friend (a day after I had come out to my junior in reciprocation), we were in a class together, I scribbled on a paper that I was not straight and started crying. He told me it was okay and hugged me after the class which felt very comforting. I came out to a few close friends after that, all of them received it well and offered any support I needed. I came out to my parents in November 2015 and started coming out to more of my friends and colleagues after that. A common response from my parents and some of the friends was, ‘You could have told us what was going on much earlier instead of going through it alone all these years.’

I realised that it was true, that I could have shared this truth with someone much before and even if they had not known how to accept it, it would have at least given me space to talk about it instead of having to struggle to find strength to deal with it all alone.

And the first time I talked about my mental health was at work with a colleague (July 2015). I had severe suicidal ideation one day... I needed to distract myself and at that point I didn’t know how to lie anymore so I took a colleague out and told her what had just happened. She talked me out of it for the time being and I visited a psychiatrist after that.

In my experience, many of the times I confided in someone about my mental health, more often than not, people could relate to what I was saying and narrated their own experiences of loneliness or the feeling of hopelessness, and also expressed how lonely it feels in those times. Many of these times, people thanked me for being vulnerable around them and said it encouraged them to open up about their own struggles. How relieving it feels when you see you’re not alone! It feels like when we share our story with someone, we take on some of their strength as well to fight our battles. It’s not as tiring when we don’t have to fight alone.

That’s why if there’s anything that I can advise my younger self, it is to talk. We’re only as sick as our secrets, and by talking about what is bothering us, we take away its power to control us. Be it sexuality or mental health, I wish I had opened up sooner.

The following are words from a Netflix special called Nanette by an Australian stand-up comedian Hannah Gadsby (who is queer as well and talks about mental health):

‘Stories hold our cure. I just needed my story heard, my story felt and understood by individuals with minds of their own. Because, like it or not, your story... is my story. And my story... is your story. I just don’t have the strength to take care of my story any more. I don’t want my story defined by anger. All I can ask is just please help me take care of my story. Do you know why we have the sunflowers? It’s not because Vincent van Gogh suffered. It’s because Vincent van Gogh had a brother who loved him. Through all the pain, he had a tether, a connection to the world. And that... is the focus of the story we need.’

To sum up, I would advise anyone who’s feeling a lack of safety (including my younger self) to look out for people who value authenticity and can handle being vulnerable, and share their stories. More often than you’d think, you’re met with understanding, comfort, relief, connection, strength. Also, we can all be vulnerable about our struggles in our everyday lives, which can create a safe space for everyone.

...I’ve been going to my current therapist for three years now. We’ve identified that I have accumulated layers of trauma, my own and intergenerational — my parents’ inter-caste marriage and my mother’s family disowning her, me growing up gay in denial, the sudden death of my brother, unhealthy relationships. My therapist made me see how I didn’t give space to myself to process the grief of my brother’s death because I was worried about how my parents were handling it and that I had to be there for them. In the process, I forgot how to emote and everything became cognitive.

My therapist started with how to identify emotions and feel them in real time, we’re now working on how to change thought patterns, and how to unlearn unhealthy coping mechanisms — some of them like fight, flight, fawn (people pleasing in order to deflect from letting myself feel), freeze (dissociate, again to distract from feeling). We’re working on cultivating radical acceptance towards trauma.

When I first started going to therapy — and I notice this among a lot of other people as well — I wanted a quick fix to my ‘negative’ emotions which had started to feel overwhelming. I believed that once I stopped feeling sad or afraid or angry, everything would work out great.

Thinking we, or our emotions, need fixing feeds into a loop of believing we are broken in some way. And this not only doesn’t help in our healing but also sets us on a pattern of new maladaptive mechanisms. Especially for those of us young people who have not felt adequate sense of safety while growing up and picked up unhealthy patterns in our formative years, we may question comfort and love in our later relationships, and are prone to stay in abusive relationships. It’s imperative we hold space for ourselves and form support systems.

Anwesh Pokkuluri is an IIT graduate who took on the broader legal system, leading a group of other IITians to file a petition against Section 377 in the Supreme Court. In Young Mental Health, Pokkuluri builds on his story shared with The Health Collective, a space for conversations around mental health.

If you are in a crisis and feel suicidal, call Sneha at 044-24640050.

Excerpted from Young Mental Health by Amrita Tripathi and Meera Haran Alva (Simon and Schuster), available on Amazon.in and Healthcollective.in

Mental health is a collective responsibility: The person is not the problem - INDIAN EXPRESS

Mental health is a collective responsibility: The person is not the problem

Imagine: We have created the toxic society in which young people are struggling to survive.


Written by Shelja Sen | New Delhi | Updated: June 21, 2020 9:45:50 am

XReach out, hold tight: We need to reflect on how to help each other overcome mental-health impediments. (Source: getty images)

Right from an early age, we are recruiting our children into believing that there is one right way to live their life. In a talk or in a workshop, I generally ask the audience if they know somebody who has experienced mental health struggles. Some hands shoot up right away, then others start raising their hands tentatively, looking around and taking solace in the sense of solidarity until all the hands go up. Then, I make it a little more difficult and check if they know somebody who has dealt with suicidal thoughts. Majority of the hands go up again. It is all around us — in our homes, our schools, colleges, workspaces, public places — staring back at us, asking us to look, listen. But we turn away, leaving them with their silences. Maybe sometimes, that silence and shame becomes too much to live with. It takes the death of a public figure to remind us how much mental health matters. For the coming weeks, there will be a flurry of Instagram, Facebook and Twitter posts by well-meaning people, but then it will all go away, as it generally does. Do we realise how difficult it is for people living with depression or anxiety to be their own advocates at every step, especially when they have been convinced that something is inherently wrong with them — that they are the problem?

The person is not the problem, the problem is the problem

Right from an early age, we are recruiting our children into believing that there is one right way to live their life. They are constantly struggling against the illusionary yardstick of success. They are being sold the idea that the higher they go, the better they will be. But then they wonder why every rung up leads to more misery? Off-the-chart suicide rates of IIT aspirants in Kota coaching centres should shake us out of our collective stupor of what we see as the making of a “good life”. A study conducted by Assocham in 2018 found that 42.5 per cent of employees are struggling with depression and/or anxiety in their high-pressure jobs. They possibly climbed the ladder of success and security to find it is a myth. They have internalised the propaganda that the only way they are worth something is if they get into a good college, “be productive” and get into a financially stable career. Therefore, it is no surprise that the chilling statistics indicate that one in four young persons is struggling with depression or anxiety and that India tops the world in youth suicide.

Read| Imagine: It’s our society that is broken, not our kids

The person is not the problem, the problem is the problem, and the problem is social!*

Shiv is a young man I met who had been lured into the society’s idea of success. In our discussion, he started realising that his company’s work culture of constant pressure, of “never being good enough” was pushing him into depression. As we unspooled this problematic notion of success, he realised, “My life can’t be just about meeting the next target, pay my bills and die.” He renegotiated his purpose in life, had a clear chat with his boss on what he would be able to deliver and started doing things that aligned with what he valued the most. For example, getting together with his old band and jamming every weekend and not “wasting precious hours of my life thinking of how to get ahead.”

There is much talk about the “epidemic” of mental health problems reaching unprecedented proportions. We have been made to believe that it can all be understood as “chemical imbalance” but that does not hold much water in the face of growing research and begs the question, “Who has a chemically balanced brain and what does it look like?” To the point of being provocative, I can say it is pretty fictional and not helpful as it locates the problem within the person. It is an extremely complex problem within our socio-cultural context which needs a nuanced understanding. Our identities are formed at the intersection of gender, sexuality, age, caste, class, religion, looks (let’s not underestimate the demand for “fair & lovely”) and the most important of it all — social acceptance and social success. Mental health problems as chemical imbalance absolves us of the collective responsibility we need to take as adults. This pushes us to think it is not our problem and we end up making the problem individualistic, leading to, what I call, the 3 Ds.

Dismissal — trivialising the problem with normative judgements such as “Stop complaining all the time”; “This is so silly”; “You just need to be stronger”.

Defining — making the problem the single story about them — “I don’t think you will be able to do much in life if you are so weak.”

Dumping — mental-health problems hide issues of gross social injustice. For example, women being diagnosed with depression when they react to marital abuse, young girls who feel rejected and suicidal as they do not fit the rigid definition of “fair & lovely.” Their mental-health problems are just a mirror of a society that is unfair and damaged.

Sometimes, all people need are these simple messages:

“I see you” “I hear you” — People are multi-storied so let’s not define them by single stories of “failure” and “unworthiness.” This does not mean we have to “be positive” and “look at the silver lining” as that can be quite dismissive. It means to listen to their problems and also keep sight of their stories of courage, hopes and dreams.

“Tell me how I can help” — We might not know what to say or do, so asking might help. It is easy to get into the “let’s fix it” or advising mode but step back from it, as it might stop them from accessing their own skills and abilities to find their solution. “I have your back” — If each person knew that there is somebody out there who will accept them the way they are no matter how damaged they are feeling.
It is not a mental-health problem but a problem of social justice

As a narrative therapist (Narrative Therapy was pioneered by Michael White & David Epston), I strongly believe that the solution is not an individual’s or a family’s responsibility. It is a social problem, and, therefore, we need to take the lens of social justice. There is an old legend-now-turned-to-a-metaphor that canaries were sent down into coal mines to test for gas leaks. Our young people are the canaries of our present time. We have created the toxic society in which they are struggling to survive. Maybe, this pandemic is an opportunity for us to let go of the deadwood of social expectations of success and carve out something new collaboratively. Rather than quick solutions, here are some questions we can reflect on:

What do you think are the social beliefs and norms that contribute to the rising mental health problems?

How fair are these social norms and expectations?

In what ways can you resist these expectations and support others?

We need nothing short of a social movement to make this happen. We have lost too many lives and too much time. Nobody is going to come and sort this out for us. We have to do it ourselves.

*Quoted by David Denborough, narrative practitioner, in a workshop

(Dr Shelja Sen is a narrative therapist, co-founder Children First, writer, and, in this column, she curates the know-how of the children and young people she works with. Write to her shelja.sen@childrenfirstindia.com)

Student suicide rising, every one hour one student commits suicide in India

Student suicide rising, every one hour one student commits suicide in India

In Indian states, Maharashtra has the highest number of suicides in 2018 with 1448 with an average of 4 suicides every day.
By TPT Bureau | Agencies
-June 19, 2020



According to NCRB (National Crime Records Bureau), every hour, at least, one student commits suicides and 28 suicides each day are recorded on an average. Its data shows that 10,159 students died by suicide in 2018 with an increase from 9950 cases in 2017, and 9478 in 2016. In Indian states, Maharashtra has the highest number of suicides in 2018 with 1448 with an average of 4 suicides every day.

“Live a little every day, ek hi zindagi mili hai”, you have got only one life, this is the abstract of the eight-page long suicide note written by a deceased postgraduate student at IIT-Hyderabad who was found dead on July 2 last year in his hostel room.

Pressure Comes from Different Sides

It might be easy for others to say that “coward” people do suicide, they don’t think about their family or anyone but it is the worst kind of feeling which only the sufferer may experience. There are many reasons for students to be under pressure and that pressure somehow becomes unbearable for them. Education is the point that tops the list of pressure. For instance, in April last year, 19 students in Telangana committed suicide a week after the exam results were announced. In 2018, 12 students including six girls ended their lives a single day after the release of the board exam’s results. Taking the recent cases into consideration, on 18th June 2020, two inter students committed suicide in the state on Thursday.

According to an interview given by a psychiatrist Mr. Murgesh Vaishanv “Stress, anxiety disorder, depression, personality disorder- all these things result in mental illness that leads a student towards suicide. This happens when the students are not familiar with/satisfied with his or her surroundings”. Although fight or argument in friendships and relationships is also a prominent reason for having these feelings.

Two Persons can Save Each Other
Now, why do they do suicide? There are so many people around everyone and hardly anyone is alone nowadays, then why these types of cases are increasing. If we hear to Md. Sanjeer Alam, “A student commits suicide when he does not get emotional support at the time of stress or anxiety. This might happen when individual expectations are too high. Parental and peer pressure also have an adverse effect”.

In 2017, a survey report was released by Lokniti-CSDS released a survey that states that one out of every fourth youth moderately suffered from depression, loneliness, worthlessness, and suicidal thoughts. It also states that four out of every 10 people are going through depression.

Now, the question which arises here is, why are the number of depressed people in our country shooting up? Why are very much busy in our lives that we do not have time to listen to the other person or at least say to them that ‘you can tell me, I am here’. According to doctors, and psychiatrists depression, anxiety, and other mental issues can be tackled at home and will never even raise if we talk to our parents and friends

Author
Kanupriya

Publisher Name
THE POLICY TIMES

Publisher Logo

The futile search for rationale in the act of suicide,

The futile search for rationale in the act of suicide
By Bhavdeep Kang

Suicide seems irrational, inexplicable, illogical. We are wired to look for meaning, because without it, there is only chaos.

Pixabay

Suicide is a paradox. An act where the victim and perpetrator are one and the same, where an organism hardwired for self-preservation chooses to self-destruct. An act which evokes paradoxical feelings of empathy and alienation. Empathy, because deep down we are all capable of self-harm, and alienation, because it defies our most fundamental evolutionary instinct, to survive.

The solitary nature of the act, in a species designed for social behaviour, makes it still more disturbing. We search obsessively for rationalisation. In the absence of closure in the form of an explanatory suicide note, we look for triggers: a former lover, a sadistic employer, a band of cyber-bullies, or a demanding family; financial ruin, public humiliation, ill-health or an altruistic motive. Sometimes, our survivor's guilt and anger at the pointless waste of a life is misdirected and we lapse into scapegoating.

The tragic death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput has opened the floodgates to recriminations. Bollywood's power elite has been castigated on social media for allegedly ill-treating the young actor and sabotaging his career. The outsider versus the establishment narrative has caught the imagination of the Twitterati, prompting certain members of the Bollywood aristocracy to hit back.

Assigning blame is a desperate effort to make sense of a senseless act, but is itself illogical. Every profession has its bullies and exclusive clubs that make outsiders feel unwelcome. Why should the entertainment industry be any different?

Many young outsiders like Rajkumar Rao, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Ayushmann Khurrana and so on, have made their mark in Bollywood in recent years. Granted, they may not command the big budgets and massive fees that the more well-entrenched stars enjoy, but have achieved tremendous success nonetheless. Perhaps they were fortunate and did not provoke the ire of the brat-pack, or perhaps they didn't care two hoots if they did.

Which brings us to the question of being “strong enough” to withstand the slings and arrows of an unkind world. The suicide victim is characterised as “weak”. The premium on strength is ritualised in various ways. In certain communities, running the gauntlet of physical or verbal abuse is a rite of passage. Witness the hazing that newcomers in college go through, before they are accepted as members of the student body. Sadistic ragging has claimed more lives than we care to acknowledge and to describe the victims as weak is to add insult to injury.

Depression does not discriminate between the so-called weak and strong. It knows no boundaries of age, class, gender or education. It could be induced by psychological or physiological (as appears to have been the case with Sushant Singh) factors and aggravated by stress, which in turn may be caused by any number of things: professional setbacks, social isolation, etc. It is hard to determine how a melancholic train of thought is set in motion and where it leads.

Few of us can claim never to have experienced depression, however fleetingly. Who can forget the violent emotional storms of adolescence? Many of us, in the throes of a broken relationship, will have had dark thoughts and vague ideas of ending it all. A minority may have escaped the plunge into despair altogether, but most others will have confronted the dark side and survived, congratulating themselves on their strength of mind. The truth is that they are more lucky than strong.

Depression is a condition with potentially serious outcomes, like diabetes or heart disease. Precautionary measures and/or medication are just as necessary. To treat it as a form of self-indulgence or weakness is like a heart patient shutting out the necessity of exercise and a controlled diet. Sadly, the cultural emphasis on mental strength may prevent the victim from reaching out for help when they needs it most.

Family, friends, spiritual advisors and mental wellness professionals can play a critical role in keeping depressed individuals from falling off the precipice. Everybody needs someone to reach out to at any time, for any reason. The “3 am friend” is a necessary feature of the modern urban family, a tribal unit not necessarily related by blood. But no matter how strong the support structures are, they may not always succeed. It is all too easy to confuse self-pity with depression and tell our friends to “get a grip” or “snap out of it”, thereby aggravating the problem.

Every 40 seconds, someone, somewhere in the world, commits suicide. More lives are lost to suicide every year than a whole decade of war and terrorism. Our response to news of suicide is visceral, particularly when the victim is an apparently healthy and successful youngster. It seems irrational, inexplicable, illogical. We are wired to look for meaning, because without it, there is only chaos. So we try to solve the unsolvable. But some questions don't have answers and all we can do is to try and ensure it doesn't happen to someone we know.

The writer is a senior journalist with 35 years of experience in working with major newspapers and magazines. She is now an independent writer and author.

Governments pass the buck of suicides, every time - QRIOUS

16JUN, 20

Governments pass the buck of suicides, every time

Apart from the occasional uproar that we witness when a famous personality has committed suicide, we as a society seldom talk or discuss or take enough measures to at least minimize the suicides that are happening in our country.

BY QRIUS

by Dr. Sipoy Sarveswar

The recent news on the suicide of Sushant Singh Rajput has come as a shock for the whole country. Celebrities have expressed their shock and condolences on the demise, from politicians to Bollywood’ fraternity’ and cricketers. His close friends have blamed themselves for not being able to render emotional support to him to battle his depression and mental health issue. It took us one more celebrity suicide and demise for the celebrities and millennials to acknowledge that mental health issues and depression are real and that there is dire need to reach out to the people who are close to us. Another set of friends, as well as the critics, has blamed the Bollywood ‘fraternity’ for not recognizing and seeking measures to reach out to their ‘community’ of actors.

On similar lines, last year, in July, Cafe Coffee Day founder and VG Siddhartha- a business tycoon allegedly committed suicide because of the financial problems and setbacks. 

The two deaths of famous and well-established personalities also triggered the debate around mental health and depression as potential reasons for suicides. Suicides are a peculiar problem that haunts academicians as they couldn’t decipher potential established patterns that one can observe and pose a remedy of the situation as an attempt to prevent suicide. Every suicide seems to pose a unique pattern that cannot be collated and used to avoid the suicides, possibly.

Apart from the occasional uproar that we witness when a famous personality has committed suicide, we as a society seldom talk or discuss or take enough measures to at least minimize the suicides that are happening in our country. 

According to Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India (ADSI) (2018) report published by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Ministry of Home Affairs, GoI, in the last five years (2014-2018) the total number of reported suicides are 6,60,700. However, the other independent organization estimates a much larger number of suicides than the ADSI reported data. According to the report each day, there are 362 suicides reported in these past five years, which is, for every hour, 15 people committed suicide.

But who are these people committing suicides? 

In the total number of reported victims of suicide, 22.4% are Daily wage earners, 17.1% are housewives, 9.8% are Self Employed, 9.6% are unemployed, 7.7% are in the farming sector, and 7.6% are students according to the ADSI (2018) report. 

Farmers’ suicides are a recognized problem because of the agricultural distress and the respect we hold for our food producers. However, there are no substantial measures taken to prevent even the farmers’ suicides, apart from states coming up with monetary compensation for the victims of suicide in the farming sector. On 2nd January 2018, the then Minister of State for Home Affairs replied to the lower house of Indian Parliament that almost 26 students committed suicide every day (more than one student committed suicide every hour). Nearly 75,000 students are victims of suicide from 2007-2016.

After the rise in student’s suicide in IITs, IIT Madras, IIM Kashipur, and a large number of student hostels, Kota in Rajasthan, installed or contemplated to use ‘Fan Bush Protection Device’ to prevent these events. This device would not withstand the weight of more than 40 Kilos if students tried to hang themselves. One of my friends in IIT Hyderabad informed me of the institutes’ measures to remove one or two bolts that hold the door, which will help break the door quickly in case of a suicide. During discussions with my friend, he drew an analogy that we are in the habit of cursing someone if they happen to come under the wheel of our vehicle, saying, ‘did you get only my vehicle to die for?’. We are culturally trained to not to see the larger picture but to have an objection to someone dying in front of our vehicle. The educational institutes and system are trying to do the same by not addressing the issue holistically but coming up with measures to stop suicides in their respective institutions. If only all the academic knowledge is mustered and put to use to minimize the student’s suicides, maybe we will not be reported as a country with the highest suicide death rate in the world.

The general arguments that propel in the buzz of a famous personality’ suicide can be categorized as 

Individual’s problem- Asking those who are depressed to reach out to the people and not to commit suicide. Ironically the people who are going through depression may not realize it, and the conditions we have successfully created in the society may not give them the confidence to reach out for help. 

Society’s (community) problem- These sets of arguments (a) blame themselves for not able to provide emotional support. (b) Blame friends, relatives or the ‘imagined’ community such as film, media and academic fraternity and so on, for not able to either reach out personally based on their personal relationship or not able to create a conducive environment as the community that would have prevented the suicide of the person. Or (c) Advocate to reach out to friends and family or to create a society that will not stigmatize mental health issues and provides an opportunity for the depressed to reach out for help without being judged.

It is appalling to see how the State and the free-market Capitalism induced neo-liberal economic policies and systems are always gone scot-free without being held accountable for by the members of the society. 

As Yuval Noah Harari (2011) argues, the systematic intervention of state and market in the lives of individuals distanced family and community influence from the individual’s life. The state and market dictate every aspect of our lives. It commodifies necessities such as education, health, and water. 

Crony capitalism influenced state policies
Weakens the labor laws
Exploits our natural resources
Pollutes our environment
Creates unliveable situations
Taxes us heavily
Widens the economic inequalities
Leads towards privatization and commodification of education
Sells us unachievable dreams
Keeps us in the limbo of unhappiness
Creates economic, social and job insecurities
Make us adopt uncertainty as a part of our culture

Then all of a sudden, when suicides happen, the state and market don’t own any responsibility and pass on the buck to the individual and community in the name of mental health and depression.

To make some sense, let’s use the language of the market and state here for a minute. Hypothetically, imagine a Boeing 777-300 ER with a seating capacity of 345 passengers crashing every day in a year. How would State, Market, and individuals in the society react? They would want the government to take responsibility and resolve the issue. The number of passengers mentioned in the above hypothetical situation is lesser than the number of suicides reported per day by the ADSI (2018) report.

There is a dire need for our all-powerful market controlled state to start owning up the responsibility (if not all of it) to address this issue, which the country suffers. I also acknowledge the importance of the role of the community in addressing this issue. Mental Health issues are real, and depression is not a matter of joke. Still, without addressing the problem holistically from all possible angles, we may not potentially resolve this issue and minimize the instances of suicides in India. If we fail to collectively pressurize our government to provide concrete solutions in addressing this issue, the suicides are going to be part of our daily reality. A famous person’s suicide is going to be fodder for our social media updates in the momentary buzz, creating a mere chance to express our shallow solidarities with the victims of suicide and in continuing to add useless analysis and news in the media outlets.

This article was first published in The ArmChair Journal

21-year-old IIT-Tirupati student commits suicide ..

21-year-old IIT-Tirupati student commits suicide ..
Read more at:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/76161915.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst