My take on World Mental Health Day

In today’s fast paced world every second person is falling victim to mental illness. Everyone is taking stress of every other thing in their life whether it is personal issue, financial issue, employer issue etc. And the COVID of last 3 years has made the situation worse. Not only COVID but all the restrictions imposed due to it have increased the stress in everyone’s life. It has affected nearly everyone in some form or the other. For example: Business class people got tensed over financial issues due to not being able to open their shops, salaried class people stuck at home and unable to socialize, people who did not get COVID became stressed by the panic arouse in their neighbourhood, society, city, country and the surrounding countries.

One of the reasons for increasing mental illness is the increasing craze of social media everywhere. Everyone is running in the race to become a creator. Everyone is running behind getting a large number of followers. Needless to say, social media has its advantages and indeed a large number of advantages but it also has many disadvantages. Most of us who see others enjoying so much through their social media posts or reels think that they are the only ones who are sad and not doing anything important in their life, they are just useless, all the rest are eligible and so on. Basically we start cribbing about ourselves by seeing the updates of someone else’s life. Do you think is it really worth? Is it really fair to make yourself sad by seeing updates from someone else’s life? But we must realize the fact that while most everyone shows the happy part of their life to the world, there are very few people who openly talk about their sorrows. So, we don’t know what might be going on in their personal life. It is quite possible that they are also suffering from some depression and are using their social media to distract themselves. This might be their way of fighting stress and anxiety. Hence those whose one of the depression reasons is social media only, try taking a break from it, or at least try cutting down your social media spend time.

Now we will look at the symptoms of mental illness. People with mental illness get irritable very easily, things they used to keep calm about now frustrate them. Every little thing frustrates them. Every small thing frustrate them. They complain about every bad thing that happens in their life, even if they are beyond their control. They also bring back things from the past to prove that everything has been wrong with them for a very long time. They feel nothing right. Even if the thing happening is right, they will complain about that by finding a small bad thing about it. They even blame others for the way their life is. They find it very difficult coping with all of their problems. They create a situation for themselves in which if someone close tries to explain the right things to them, they do not understand them. They just take out all their anger on them. They don’t listen to them. They don’t really listen to anyone. They used to think and crib about all of the bad things happening with them throughout the day. They used to have negative thoughts all the time. Those people are said to suffer from a personality trait called “Victim syndrome”. All this not only worsens their condition but also affects their health. All this anxiety, stress, depression increases hypertension, increases the chances of heart attack and many other health problems. These things even lead to suicide in some cases.

The sad thing is that 7 out of 10 mentally ill people do not even realize that something is wrong with them. They were not like this before. Something negative has changed. In fact they start accepting that they are like that from the very beginning. This is their nature and behaviour and instead of trying to overcome it, keep doing it.
Another sad thing is that if people find out that something is wrong, they are not able to figure out that they are suffering from a mental illness and should try to overcome it.
Therefore, the important step in recovering from mental illness is to first find out that we are suffering from mental illness and now is the right time to make efforts to recover from it.

Now, mental illness can have different causes for everyone. One may be stressed due to their financial problems, one may be depressed due to a decline in their career growth and so on. It could be anything for anyone. It is not necessarily the same for everyone. Therefore, it is not necessary that its treatment should be the same for everyone.

When people realize this, they start reading about the cure on Google and try things themselves. For example, one tries meditation, yoga, exercise, one starts reading books, one starts going out with friends to talk and play sports etc. And all these things are really beneficial because there are many studies that show that such things help in curing stress and depression. Basically these things distract us and help us in doing something good for our mind and body. In fact people should try anything or everything that can help them to take a break from their problems and help their mind and body to relax.

But what to do when these things do not work out. Seek a Therapy. Going to a therapist or a psychiatrist or some mental illness consultant is the next best option. But there is a problem with this solution. Many of us feel it’s a shame as they might be suffering from a mental illness and are more worried about what the society would think about them. They hesitate in seeking a therapy or even talk to someone about it. But we should know that this is also in the long list of diseases that need to be cured and the doctor is a doctor who can help to cure them. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. And if you still feel ashamed then you should know that 6 out of 7 people are suffering from mental illness today and they also have to find some cure and therapy is one of the cure for it, so at least 1 out of 6 people will consult a therapist. And so society will not judge only you :P. There are many more people with you who are trying to fight this disease. And above all you are suffering from the disease and not the society which is suffering, so it is only you who has to take necessary steps to cure it, not the society. Do what is best for you without thinking about society and others.

Seeing all the consequences of mental illness and their treatment, we should understand that we should take care of our mental health along with physical health. Positive mental health allows us to:

• Deal with all the life problems.
• Think positively.
• Work productively and so on.

Hence, we must try doing all the things required to take care of our mental health. For example: daily workout, cycling, meditation, yoga, reading, writing, playing etc. These are just examples from my cookbook, but obviously everyone has to figure out as to what will help them.

That’s all. I hope I was able to connect with you on this topic and encourage you to take care of your mental health.

Good luck.
Take care of both mental and physical health.