Issues of depression and mental health

What is the issue?

Education in India doesn’t discuss depression and mental health, thus making cinema the only crusader to deal about the issues.

What is the stigma related with depression and mental health?

• In our country, talking about depression is more of a taboo than talking about sex.
• We simply don’t discuss mental health, particularly its emotional aspect.
• Not just because of the stigma attached to it, but also because people don’t understand the subject properly.
• Because emotional development isn’t taught in schools or homes.
• No one has ever tried to tell us about emotions in a manner that doesn’t seem like an academic exercise or in a way that could make us relate to the issue and evoke genuine interest.
• Depression and suicides resulting from it, is the second leading cause of morbidity amongst 15 to 29-year-olds globally.
• Every year, more than 8,00,000 people die having committed suicide and many more attempt it.
• As WHO put states preventing suicide: a global imperative.
• Interest and motivation are in the domain of emotion, not cognition.
• Formal education helps the development of cognitive intelligence, not sensory.
• Because it focuses on learning through reading and writing, language, words, not images and sound.
• But films combine the two — that is the advantage of films; that makes cinema a richer medium of instruction.

What is the role of cinema?

• For far too long, we’ve perpetuated the theory that anything that has to be taught should be through books; cinema is only for entertainment.
• But cinema’s purpose goes far beyond.
• You may watch cinema for entertainment but a lot of information from screen goes into your subconscious mind.
• If this information isn’t authentic, it results in misunderstandings, but when authentic cinema tackles a subject, it is a much better tool of education than any other.
• For e.g. one knew the words “dyslexia” and “learning disability” but never gave them much thought till Taare Zameen Par lent viewers a new understanding.
• With depression becoming the second largest reason for morbidity amongst the young, cinema can help create larger public opinion to remove the stigma.

How is depression viewed in India?

• It is unspoken, unrecognised depression that leads to suicide or substance abuse.
• Depression is part of a psychiatric disorder.
• To talk about it, one doesn’t require intelligence but acceptance.
• Society is now accepting the concept of the intellectually challenged, but not the emotionally challenged.
• In India, a sign of maturity, especially amongst women, is apparently how successfully they can conceal their emotions, rather than expressing them.
• Meanwhile, social pressures are only rising.
• The phenomenal growth in means of communication today could result in your getting lost within a jungle of information.
• This in turn causes information bombardment which is a major cause for today’s depression.
• Added with it is today’s changing lifestyle where in pursuit of getting all materialistic things we tend to lose ourselves which also leads to depression.

Source: Indian Express