The Indian Mental Healthcare Act typically talks about Mental Illness, but then, how does it impact a person in his or her daily life especially those who are mentally disturbed?
With the growing population in India, it is natural that many citizens will sometime or the other face financial or emotional stress, which can probably affect their mental state.
Mental Capacity of an individual can change anytime but then, why does India shy away from discussing such topics especially at the rural level?
Mental disturbance has a direct impact on the stability and sustainability of a person, besides having multiple collateral damages like broken friendships, disturbed office work and family relations.
While it is easy to diagnose a physical ailment however diagnosing the invisible mind games is different. Specialist doctors and domain experts can help to a great extent, but then they too are dependent upon the openness of the patient to share the complete information.
A broken heart and a broken mind are probably more hurtful than a broken hand. It is easy to say that, just change the thought process or outlook in life and everything will look like a bed of roses, but then are we not controlled by our mind? Not many people can balance the equilibrium between the mind and body because most of us are not realized to that level.
The larger point of debate is; mental health is often seen as a topic of hush hush discussions or behind closed doors, luckily the dynamics are changing rapidly which is evident from the fact that young children are also getting depression and other mental imbalances.
To summarise, I will use the song by U2 "Where the Streets have no Name". For a person who is suffering from mental health issues, he or she is probably not hurting friends and family deliberately or is a negative individual, it's a medical condition which has corrupted the grey cells and he is himself lost on the Street which has no name...
But then, as Deep Purple sang; When a Blind Man Cries -
If you're leaving, close the door
I'm not expecting people, anymore
Hear me grieving, lying on the floor
Pankaj Mehrotra
