Trivialisation of mental disorders has increased the stigma around them in India, says Muskaan Sharma
Often we hear young people ascribing their state of mind and behaviour to a mental condition. “I am so organised and neat. I have OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) ” or “He gets angry easily, must be bipolar.” Some complain of uneasiness due to “panic and stress attacks.” Such disorders are being casually bandied about in everyday conversation, often diluting and misrepresenting the severity of the relevant mental health condition. In a country where almost 7.5 per cent of the population suffers from mental illness, this trivialising tendency is doing more harm than good.
According to WHO, not only does 4.5 per cent of India’s population — 56 million Indians — suffer from depression at this moment, another 38 million Indians suffer from anxiety disorders. Mental illnesses have long been considered a taboo and their acceptance as an ailment just like any other is a huge challenge anyway. With a flippant attitude of not matching the disease or condition with the diagnosis may end up fogging perceptions even further. Says Dr Arun Broota, a clinical psychologist, “It is good that we know about disorders like OCD and bipolar disease today. This at least starts a conversation in the society but the manner of propagation of words like OCD has caused the severity of the disease to be lost. This may have huge impact on the patients suffering from them. Their voices might get muffled by the continuous trivialisation.”
You do not need a linguist to tell you how certain words and their repetition in everyday conversation impact the mind. Unconsciously, you start believing in their popular meaning. Using technical words like “bipolar” or “schizophrenic” to describe mundane deviations or aberrations means the original meaning is lost on us while unknowingly associating them with fleeting experiences that may not be a disease at all. In a sense, it normalises the disease or illness. But would we have been able to do such a thing with a severe physical ailment, the impact of which is visualIJ No, mental illness, given its amorphous manifestation or absence of physical symptoms, is open to abusive interpretations. Abusive because if flakiness is diagnosed as representing a serious anomaly, how does one express or explain the more intense occurrence of a diseaseIJ
Talking about the growing use of mental disorders as behaviourial traits, Dr Broota says, “This trivialisation has increased with the advent of social media and adds to the pre-existing stigma around mental diseases in the country. The approach towards dealing with mental illnesses in India is three-forked. First, there’s a stigma attached to mental illnesses often leading to fear on the part of the patient or the family. Second, turning to spiritual remedies and paranormal conclusions regarding the illness or disorder. Third, the reluctance to seek proper treatment for mental diseases as it is not often available or affordable in local healthcare and medical institutes.”
Dr Broota also explains why this acceptance does not come easily in Indian society. “In our country, if a child is born with a hole in his heart, then we get tests and scans done to confirm the anomaly. Once we know that, we move ahead to a treatment protocol. We only look for tangible or visible proof of existence for an ailment. Since there is no blood test for detecting a mental illness, we consider it futile, an elite affectation and even made up at times. We do not seek help.”
Arguing the case for a more empathetic discussion, psychiatrist Seema Kumar says, “We as a society have never been able to develop a culture of free and uninhibited communication within our families. Mental health care follows the bio-psycho-social model and culture is considered one of the most important psycho-social factors in human life. We lack the understanding for seeking help professionally. We view going to a psychologist or psychiatrist as a confirmation of being labelled ‘insane.’ Seclusion and silence where the right words are needed are one of the reasons why we have not been able to understand mental illnesses. This insecurity of battling the people around you when seeking help needs to be done away with gradually. For that conversations need to be delicate, balanced and mature.”
Prevalence of seeking faith healing practices — like treatment offered by astrologers, priests, black magicians and so forth — is high among psychiatric patients, even with easy accessibility and availability of psychiatrists and hospitals, and this can lead to delay in seeking psychiatric care.
“We live in a society where spending money around a lakh or two lakh rupees on a pooja suggested by a pandit to ‘help’ a family member with mental illnesses is considered a better option than visiting a medical professional,” adds Dr Broota.
Currently, India needs 11,500 psychiatrists and 17,250 clinical psychologists. It only has 3,000 psychiatrists and 500 clinical psychologists. In addition to this, we require 23,000 psychiatric social workers. Given these challenges, it is time we act and speak responsibly and talk about a condition only when we are absolutely sure of its presence and know how to manage it.