Importance of Mental Health

10 years…. Yes 10 long years and am back to blogging. The date today is 12th May 2022 and am back to blogging after 10 long years. Month of may is also known as the National Mental Health Awareness Month, but how many of them know this and how many of us in India even think that mental health is as important as physical health. What is mental health? If you search for the definition on mental health on the internet, you would get the answer as “Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices.”

But how many of them will agree to the above definition. Is it that you are healthy mentally if you are socially active or have a lot of friends. Are you healthy mentally if you are emotionally strong or psychologically strong? No one can decide exactly what is mental health. Everyone analyses things differently and takes it in a different way.

They say women are built in such a way that they are stronger emotionally and men do not understand emotions at all. But how many of us know what they go through or have gone through to get to that state of mind. They also say that it is easier for women to express things and it is difficult for men. But has anyone tried understanding as to why we say this and why this difference for men and women.

From a young age, we men are thought that Boys do not cry and same for men. Then there is that famous phrase or should I say the famous dialogue of Bollywood “Mard ko Dard nahin hota” which means Men do not feel pain. When a boy/man cries the first thing he will hear is “Why are you crying like a woman?” or he will hear names being called like “Sissy”. Ladies, please do not take me wrong by thinking that i am trying to say or demean any character of a woman. I am just putting out my opinion about what men go through and why it is difficult for men to come out openly and admit that they are depressed.

Not everyone expresses the same way, may it be a man or a woman. Most of the women express themselves or open up in front of their friends. But when a man opens up in front of another man who is his best friend, he is shrugged off saying be strong and you cannot think like this or like that “Be a Man”. What happens after that is that all the emotions are bottled up inside and more and more get being added on to the thoughts, sadness & loneliness inside the person.

Then one day, they cannot take it anymore and they do the inevitable “Suicide”. How many of us know what it took for that person to take that extreme step, it does not have to be financial reason, love failure, failure in business or anything that society thinks of when we hear suicide for a person to take that step. A person can seem to be very happy one day and the next day he or she is no more. And after that we start saying “Why did he not reach out to me or someone to talk to?”. But when that person was alive how many of them actually tried to ask or listen when the person tried to speak.

There are a lot of scenarios that could have led to the person going into depression. And when a person is in depression no matter what happens it is not easy for that person to always think positive, he or she will start thinking negative at a pin drop. He or she will try to find solace in something that he feels can help him calm down. It may be anything good or bad (music, travel, alcohol, drugs) We only see one side of the story and never try to understand the pain behind the words or actions.

My only request to people going through depression is to open up with someone they trust the most, cos even in this situation there are people who take advantage of what you share with them and misuse it for their good. For people who have friends or loved ones who seem to be in depression, please listen to them when they talk. Even a minute of time spent listening to them can go a long way.

Finally, Wish everyone a lot of good health and happiness. Thank you all for taking the time to read my blog.

Appropriate Or Inapporpiate Dressing…..

Been more than a year since i have been missing in action from my blog, but certain comments by well known people who themselves are the ones in the post where in they need to think on welfare of the women and on how to reduce the crime rate in the city went on to state that the women were being raped due to the clothes that they wear. I first started thinking, have they gone mad, if yes the NIMHANS(Bangalore) is not too far from the place where they made these comments, and the doctors there will make sure they get the right treatment. Some people have just gone berserk and make such comments just to gain publicity.

The comment was requesting women and teenage girls to dress with dignity, the question is waht do they mean when they ask them to dress with dignity. If they are requesting the gals to wear salwar kameez and saree, my question to them would be, havent there been attacks on women who were wearing the above mentioned dresses, and the next question would be why are there attacks on women in the rural areas where the women or teenage gals do not wear skimpy clothes. Not only in this 20th century, but there have been attacks on women from a long time, when indian women did not even know about short skirts or skimpy clothes. The best example for this would be the life story of Bandit Queen,  Phoolan Devi, and also a lady in the village who was attacked by 5 men. Why only women, there has been attacks on school going girls, does that mean the school uniforms are inappropriate clothes, or for that matter Jeans & t-shirt which covers the body of a woman appropriately.In the recent times, there has been news and of people hearing that a young girl is attacked by her own relatives or for that matter her own father, what does this imply to? A lot of questions in my mind, but i would like to stop them here and conclude.

I do not think its the dressing sense of a woman or a teenage girl that invites the attack on them from the men, but its the thinking of the men who attack them and the thinking of a normal man that we need to change. Once we change ourselves i believe the attacks on women will reduce and eventually stop.