By the time India was slated to become a global superpower, apart from us dropping places in almost every human development chart (think gender gap, religious freedom, and hunger indices), we have also managed to grossly multiply State sponsored psychological trauma. Especially, though of course not only, on those deemed to be our demographic dividend. As our country is transformed into a theatre of brutal intimidation, it is haunting not just those who are on stage. The rest of us are left to feel like helpless audiences, a helplessness that does not erode simply because of the buoyancy of the protests that have continued unabated.
Is this erosion of mental peace something new, or something brought on solely because of the ongoing political developments? No, not for all of us. Mental health challenges do not need such elaborate external constructs to develop.The most tough, perplexing part of this grave issue is how even in times of 'normalcy', or due to reasons not easily apparent to others, so many people, and so many people who are in their formative years, are struggling with or have struggled with some mental health issue or the other.
According to the WHO, by 2020 (which has already arrived) around 20 percent of Indian population will suffer from some sort of mental illness.We are already the most depressed country in the world, followed closely by China and the USA. We have the highest suicide rate in South East Asia.As per the National Mental Health Survey 2015-16, conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences (NIMHANS), under the purview of the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, around 150 million Indians are in need of active mental health help intervention, and the prevalence of disorders is higher in urban metros than other areas, with an alarming presence of morbidities in our age group which can have lifelong impacts.
These distressing statistics, however, were not what prompted us to take a survey of the mental health landscape of Delhi University, the hub of higher education in our nation.In fact, we familiarized ourselves with these frightening facts only after experiencing the intensity and magnitude of this in our friend circles and peer groups. It was then that we decided to attempt to capture the prevalence, pattern, and perception of mental health issues across DU.
As a primarily digital institution, and with Google Forms remaining as our principal mode of disseminating the questionnaire ,we were well aware of our limitations in terms of representativeness of the sample. On top of this, since mental health literacy is not widespread, there was a possibility of misinterpretation of the terminology used in our questionnaire, despite our best efforts to frame questions in a way so as to evade any such happening. Despite these snags, we decided to go ahead with the survey, because the necessity of seriously talking about, and trying to understand these issues, is so immense; and the lack of any meaningful step in this direction at an aggregate level in DU or SRCC (at least according to our knowledge) so troubling, that even some crude collection of information seemed like a step towards some significant illustration.
Spanning twenty eight colleges and twenty three courses of Delhi University, our survey had SRites forming around twenty eight per cent of the total respondents, due to obvious reasons of us having a better reach here. Strangely, around forty nine per cent of our respondents were first year students, with third years forming the next highest group at twenty nine per cent. The total number of respondents was one hundred and eighty.
Around half the people surveyed stated having experienced a mental health challenge, with depression, anxiety, and insomnia topping the charts, as either stand alone disorders or all occurring together. Occurrences of OCD, bipolar disorder, seizures, and aphasia were also mentioned.Suicidal tendencies, a common consequence of mental health challenges (especially depression) were also specifically named. This pattern was repeated when respondents were asked to state mental health issues faced by their personal contacts, with schezophrenia, dementia, dyslexia, anorexia, PTSD, ADHD, body dysmporphia and trichotillomania also being added to this sobering mix.
When it came to mental health literacy, things looked equally as dismaying. While many respondents claimed to have some awareness about common mood disorders as well as severe mental disorders, only 44% of the respondents were confident enough to attempt the question which asked them to differentiate between mental illness and mental condition. Even within this small percentage, around half of the respondents simply filled in with an “I don’t know”, or gave entirely incorrect answers. The responses to this question also indicated that some do not view dysthymia (also known as persistent depressive disorder) to be a proper mental health disorder, and assume that it would not require interventions of psychotherapy or medication. Other incorrect assumptions like mental illness not having a biological basis; existence of a happy-sad binary between minds not afflicted with a mental health issue and those struggling with the same; and self-harm being the validation for the presence of a mental health disorder, also came to the fore. Another peculiar recurrence in the answers was the understanding that mental condition is a negative term that denoted mood swings or bouts of overthinking.Perhaps discourse on mental health is so sparsely held that it led people to assume that since this questionnaire is dealing with mental health challenges, anything with the word “mental” needs to necessarily have a negative connotation.
To understand how mental health is understood by our sample, we needed to know from where exactly did they seek or get knowledge about the issue in the first place.Social media emerged as the most common source of awareness cited by the participants, which is not a surprise given our generation’s tendency to consume most information while scrolling.This might provide some explanation for misconceptions,as not everything put up is verifiable or valid information. Social media was followed by internet based research, and personal contacts and personal experience. Extra curricular books and media were also specified as quite significant sources of information, which seems to be a healthy trend.In fact, an interesting source to have earned its place among the fairly common informants is classroom discussions. This is indeed a positive find.However, 51.2% of the respondents still felt that classrooms were not a welcoming space to discuss mental health issues. Text books, government campaigns, and college or DU campaigns were, again not surprisingly, the most unpopular sources.
Our mental health mentality:
Beyond just seeing what, how much, and from where our sample knows about mental health, it is necessary to see its translation into their attitudes towards it; for attitudes can play a very powerful role in worsening or lessening the crisis, and they are the very basis for the perpetuation of stigma.Following are the results of a few questions that we asked in order to gauge the same.
With majority strongly disagreeing, and majority disagreeing overall, it is heartening to note that the general view is not to consider people undergoing mental health challenges as a burdensome lot.
Moreover, when asked about their response towards a friend whom they thought was going through mental health challenges, most of them said they would motivate them to seek help, to open up about their issues, and create a supportive atmosphere.
The percentage of people willing to seek help despite the stigma is,however, more. Perhaps this is because help can be sought privately, i.e., you do not have to necessarily talk about it to others when you seek help.
Talking to loved ones actually seems to be viewed as very effective by most of the people, leaving behind therapy, medication and help groups; while posting about it on social media is deemed as unsatisfactory by majority.
Even though many do not think that mental health issues have a societal angle, a much larger number still thinks that the government should prioritize happiness and well being over other targets.
The misconception that mental health has a “type” is significantly present, though the correct notion is still widely known.
These questions were asked to test whether people really did not believe in mental health problems afflicting only a “type” of personality, and here the number of people disagreeing with the statement is actually higher.
With the number of people agreeing to this statement being slightly more than the previous one, it seems that some people are not sure whether they view mentally challenged people as a result of their own flaws or not.
Even though majority disagree, even 28% agreeing to this statement is significant in itself because it shows how many still do not consider mental health issues as a valid enough challenge.
It is good to see that a significant number of people are at least paying attention to their own mental health.
Apart from peers, we felt that family as an institution is significant in impacting the recovery of mental health survivors, and asked some questions to gauge their attitude as well.An extremely positive finding was that 64.6% of respondents reported experience or expectations of full family support in case of a mental health issue. 12.8% said their family would understand their distress yet refuse to help them seek professional help.Another 12.2% said that they would reject the existence of the issue altogether, while 5.5% said that the family would actually get angry that the respondent was creating problems for everyone. Family taking recourse to superstitious solutions like rituals and amulets was reported by 4.9% of the respondents.
Moreover, when asked whom they would share their mental health challenges with, many favoured the family.
With majority of respondents agreeing that mental health issues are a huge challenge for current generation and deserve utmost priority, and given the responses to our questions attempting to evaluate their mental health attitude, it is clear that while people aim to be supportive, some misbeliefs still prevail (though not among all), which in practice could hinder and even thwart people’s well meaning attempts to help their friends going through mental health challenges.Such stigmatizing behaviour can be stemming from non credible knowledge structures as described before. It would be incorrect to assume, though, that even the informed public would never act in a manner that would be insensitive, because a conscious and continuous application of mental health knowledge is required to make sure that we are never endorsing the stigma.Moreover, with psychology and neuroscience constantly expanding our pool of knowledge and weeding out past misunderstandings,to even the knowledge that we have needs to be regularly updated.
According to the respondents, spreading awareness, normalising by sharing, and seeing survivors of mental health challenges in leadership roles would help in breaking the stigma.In a world that is still just waking up to this epidemic, these and many more steps need to be taken to improve attitudes and bust myths, so that we are able to provide a suitable environment for recovery of mentallly challenged individuals.