How Depression Needs to Be Tackled in Our Country

Mental health in India continues to have a stigma attached to it. Even in urban India, where conversation about mental health has become more diverse, the overarching feeling continues to be that of shame. However, it is worth noting that depression counselling in Mumbai and other major cities of India has become a lot more accessible. This can be attributed to social media in a major way. Thanks to the internet and social media becoming such a major part of our lives, seeing people talk about mental health in such an open and unabashed way has had a huge impact on this conversation. People are now willing to understand mental health issues and give them the importance that they’d usually give to other physical health issues. While words like depression are still thrown around a lot more casually, people have become a bit more sensitized to this issue.

The best way to tackle this stigma is conversations — that is something that everyone believes in. The more people talk about mental health in their everyday lives, the easier it is for people to accept it as a more common issue. A counseling psychologist needs to be more accessible to people beyond the major issues. That must be the end goal of this conversation around mental health. Apart from being accessible, you, irrespective of which city you live in, irrespective of your family dynamics, you should be able to talk about depression the same way you would talk about a physical condition like common cold. For us to reach that level of awareness and acceptance, we need to be patient and do our bit in our daily lives. Break the stigma in everyday conversations, check the insensitive behaviour of people around us and above all, be a good listener for people who are suffering with mental health issues.