10th Oct was observed as world mental health day and world homeless day.
Mental illness has been one of the taboo topics in our country. The situation is aggravated by commercial movies depicting mental sickness as being total madness. the person is being mostly projected doing weird histrionics on screen to depict cheap humour for the viewer.
The situation is not very different for homeless people like beggars, destitutes etc. People comment that they are to be blamed for their situation. They should have worked hard to earn a respectable living. The thought seldom crosses our minds that many of these destitutes may be suffering from mental illness and they need proper medical care and treatment. In fact our society is yet to acknowledge the fact that mental illness is just another form of illness like physical illness. We shun using words like depression in our vocabulary. So the suffering person has no one to look up for councelling and provision of treatment by a psychiatrist. Psychiatrist is another word we dread to use in our vocabulary! All this happens despite the widespread knowledge that depression is the major cause for suicides.
We can be more sensitive to these people and extend help if possible. Also in this age of social media we are connected to people from entire world. Why not pws from different nations and other like minded people declare a " world stammering day" to spread the awareness. Also I feel any kind of reservation will only lead to alienation from society. We should work towards aggregation and acceptance by the society. The first step would be our acceptance of ourselves :)
Mental illness has been one of the taboo topics in our country. The situation is aggravated by commercial movies depicting mental sickness as being total madness. the person is being mostly projected doing weird histrionics on screen to depict cheap humour for the viewer.
The situation is not very different for homeless people like beggars, destitutes etc. People comment that they are to be blamed for their situation. They should have worked hard to earn a respectable living. The thought seldom crosses our minds that many of these destitutes may be suffering from mental illness and they need proper medical care and treatment. In fact our society is yet to acknowledge the fact that mental illness is just another form of illness like physical illness. We shun using words like depression in our vocabulary. So the suffering person has no one to look up for councelling and provision of treatment by a psychiatrist. Psychiatrist is another word we dread to use in our vocabulary! All this happens despite the widespread knowledge that depression is the major cause for suicides.
We can be more sensitive to these people and extend help if possible. Also in this age of social media we are connected to people from entire world. Why not pws from different nations and other like minded people declare a " world stammering day" to spread the awareness. Also I feel any kind of reservation will only lead to alienation from society. We should work towards aggregation and acceptance by the society. The first step would be our acceptance of ourselves :)
2 comments:
Very thoughtful commentary. In fact, it is so easy to remove our suprestitions and stereotypes. We can just walk into such an institution, take permission and interview couple of people suffering from MH issues - sameway as we do stammering interviews with strangers.
I too have been thru a bout of depression and came out of it (a lot wiser!) with help from kind friends and others around me. There should be no stigma. These are just life events which happen to almost everyone of us at some point in life. It only adds a kind of "completeness" and ripeness to life. We become more humane and understanding..
On another note, i think 22nd oct is being observed by many countries as world stammering awareness day, even though it has not been approved or recognised by any word body like UN etc. Doesn't matter. WHerever we Gather and share honestly, that is as good as any of these world days..
Thanks Abhishek for helping us to raise our sights above and beyond, "me and my stammering"...
Thanks Sachin Sir,I was unaware of 22nd october being world stammering awareness day...
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