Mental Health Awareness Starts With The Self

10th October is celebrated as World Mental Health Day, but the irony is mental illnesses are considered a burden in most countries, if not all. You will find the following stats on the official website of the World Health Organisation (WHO):

“In terms of economic loss, mental health conditions are estimated to cause a wastage of USD 1.03 trillion between 2012-2030 (in India alone).”

How does it make you feel? It makes me feel like an out of order train engine, seriously.

Those who suffer from mental health conditions feel the most pressure to be of help in any way possible - to themselves, to other people, and to the world. It is very difficult to have anxiety and stay completely unproductive. You have to keep doing something until you completely exhaust yourself and can’t even think properly. Work is a distraction. It helps us stay sane. If you are depressed, you either feel so numb that work or no work makes no difference, or you constantly keep giving yourself guilt trips for wasting time. Being idle is not our choice, none of us enjoy it.

I am not here to tell you I know more about mental health than the top organisations in the world. However, it is possible to use better terminologies and bring in dialogues instead of data when dealing with mental health issues. Mental health is not to be treated as a burden on society - it will only make sufferers feel misunderstood and their problems invalidated. There are a lot of people who already feel like a burden in themselves, why make that worse?

The whole point of mental health awareness is to make people self-aware of what they are dealing with first. Certain mental illnesses can be so deep-rooted and well hidden that it takes years for the person to realise they actually needed help a long time back.

My idea of mental health awareness involves every single person in every single corner of the world. Mental healthcare should not only be accessible and affordable for all (not just sufferers), but every single one of us should make it a point to go for routine mental health checkups and tests, just like we do for physical health.

People do not always have common symptoms of mental conditions that might help them self-assess themselves. Everyone’s story is unique, no matter how much we relate to one another. One might be dealing with severe trauma and know nothing about it. Someone else can have severe depression and ignore it completely, not knowing the cause behind it or not having a cause at all. There might even be a person who is completely healthy, mentally, but still requires psychological support to maintain general well-being.

Help doesn’t always mean helping one get back to a productive state, helping them be efficient at work or in their career, getting them to exert their best potential in every way possible. It might just be about lending them a hand to get out of bed everyday, helping them relearn self-love and self-care, and guiding them in understanding when, how, and what to let go.

We are human beings. We love, we care, we go massive lengths to be there for our friends and family when they need us. Well, self-awareness of our own emotional and mental state can only help us in this journey of life. We would all agree that it’s foolish of one to choose to stay ignorant.

Then why does society teach us to stay ignorant of ourselves?

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