Mental Health Promotion and Suicide Prevention
On this day as we celebrate world mental health day? One question comes into my mind that why is this even necessary. I mean why we have to create awareness about it. Why is it so necessary to be aware about one’s mental health? Isn’t only being physically fit sufficient?
According to WHO Mental health is defined as a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community.
The common form of mental illness in teens ,is depression. Sometimes forcing them to become something what we want them to be, pressurizes them. There is a human tendency to look outside for motivation; we seek soothing words from a higher voice. We try to talk someone close to us, but that doesn’t help. And instead of seeking those answers in books we try to find them on social media and video sharing platforms. While doing nothing in reality, we can be something we wish to be, virtually. And out there seeing everyone having a pretty grand time, enjoying the moments of their life, we feel worthless. We want to live the life they are having, we want to be in those extra large moments. This want drives us far… far away from reality; this puts too much stress on mind and as the quantity of wants grows in our life we feels restless. Whenever we face challenging situations in our life we get anxious and all hyped up. And this makes us feel that the easiest way to escape from this loop of failures and disappointments is suicide.
One of the things that concern me the most is ,that our farmers are committing suicide. Usually they are the farmers having a small portion of land or having no land at all. In majority of the cases what happens is that they take a land on lease, from people owing large portions of agricultural land. Due to which they cannot claim benefits of government facilities like loans, input subsidy or crop insurance. And when crop fails, he is harassed by the land owner. The land owner also gets benefit from government, and it’s a win-win for him. Maybe providing an alternate form of income or providing him adequate knowledge about it would help. And the government could make policies for benefitting those who take land on lease.
One of the best ways to reduce the mental disorders among the public of our nation could be to make the holidays more interactive. Imagine that somehow instead of giving contracts to decorate temples and hiring people to clean, cook and manage; all the people coming together and doing it. Firstly as they would do it as an offering to their god, it will reduce labor cost. Secondly as people gather in a place and work together a bond is formed, and conversations begin. This could mean that a large number of people actually enjoying the holidays the way they should be. And when communities are interactive, individuals don’t feel alienated. They would feel more inclusive and would enjoy being a part. This would also be an experience to live the essence of our culture.
Talking is one of the best ways to counter mental diseases. One of the reasons that we might face some mental health issues can be lack of trust in other people to share the deepest pain causing us enormous amount of pain. This pain when hidden becomes too enormous to hold inside.
It’s okay to feel emotions like depression, anxiety. It’s okay to face failures, its common feeling to feel the need of having someone in your life. We are humans we are given senses so that we could feel emotions. Rather than escaping them we should try to acknowledge them.
