Contributed by: Ajay Sharma, Co-Founder, Epic Content & Rover Camps
We use "depressed" and "losing my mind" so casually now that the words barely register their true weight anymore.
Yet WHO's 2025 data says over 1 billion people worldwide — roughly 1 in every 7 of us — live with a diagnosable mental health condition. Nearly half of these begin before age 18. That's not a fringe issue. That's a demographic reality quietly running beneath our daily lives.
In India, the picture is starker. The National Mental Health Survey found a treatment gap of 70–92% across disorders — most people who need care simply don't get it. We have roughly one psychiatrist for every 150,000 people, about 50 times below WHO's recommended benchmark. Only around 2% of our health budget goes toward mental health.
So this isn't a private failing. It's structural, and it's ours collectively.
I say this not to alarm, but because I've watched people — myself included — mistake a slow drift for "just a bad week," again and again, until years had passed.
The American Psychiatric Association and NAMI list a set of early warning signs worth knowing, not diagnosing yourself against:
→ Withdrawing from work, people or activities you used to care about
→ Confused thinking, or a drop in your ability to concentrate and make decisions
→ Noticeable changes in sleep or appetite
→ Apathy — a loss of initiative or desire to participate in things
→ Feeling disconnected from yourself or your surroundings, a sense of things not being quite real
One or two of these, on their own, mean very little — everyone has an off week. It's when several show up together, and persist, that professionals suggest a conversation is worth having.
Where people find their footing back varies, and I don't think there's one right doorway. Some turn to therapy. Some turn to faith — the Gita's "yat pinde tat brahmande," as within, so without, has carried people for centuries. Some just need someone close enough to name a drift they can't see in themselves. None of these paths cancel the others out.
What I've come to understand, slowly, is this: impact isn't doing things because they must be done — it's doing them because they move you toward something you actually want. I didn't get it when my therapist first said it. I got it much later, seeing myself differently.
Strength was never an unbroken streak. It's how well you mend the broken ones.
