Current Condition
“I think that I’m awfully quite happy with what is happening in this context,” Kumar said about how people are talking about depression nowadays. “People are talking about it and then they’re coming open and the reason is that the technology has created many platforms of expression.”
According to Kumar, many people have been documenting their depression on social media like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and some people have even started self-help groups on Facebook. People are also using social media to talk about depression and discuss it, much like his daughter Prabha does now. Kumar also said that there are people who are making short films and movies.
Celebrities and their efforts
Celebrities have also come out about it, publicly discussing their depression. The most prominent example of this is Deepika Padukone, a famous actress who came out and told the world she suffers from depression on New Year's Day, 2015.
“So Deepika had been suffering from severe LTD depression, that is severe endogenous depression, bipolar disorder, for a long time,” Kumar said. “She was known to be treated by one of the psychiatrists known to me named Ganapathesh, so I remember that he has become a brand ambassador for Indian psychiatrics. Which was unthinkable earlier.”
Padukone has even started The Live Love Laugh Foundation six months later to help fight the battle against depression.
According to the TLLLF website, there are only about three psychiatrists for every million people in India, which is clearly problematic considering the rates of depression and suicide prevalent in the country.
“It's being talked by people who are really famous, that's really nice,” Hariharan said. “But then it's still not reaching the common people. Like there is a counselor at Anna University and there's like only one counselor for so many people.”
Padukone's TLLLF aims to train general practitioners in mental health, create a national database, develop helplines, fundraise, and collaborate with nonprofits to spread awareness about mental health.
The National Mental Health Programme
Kumar also mentioned that India has a National Mental Health Programme.
“That is a program that was conceived in the year 1982,” he said. “And then after that it went for many revisions and now they have found so much of money now that they have started District Mental Health Program.”
According to Kumar, the NMHP has three broad objectives. First, integrating mental health services into general health services. Second, achieving a mentally healthy India by the year 2000, but that date has been pushed back in subsequent revisions. Third, integrating mental health services and social welfare, education and many other services, and encouraging community participation in activities related to mental health.
Not enough progress
Despite these efforts, there is still not enough progress happening, and Prabha said that there needs to be special attention given to making sure progress happens in the right way.
“It's just that it's kind of really really sad because progress is happening, yes, but it's very very limited,” she said. “And it's important that awareness happens in the right way. So that's something we need to be concerned about.”
So the problem is getting people talking, Prabha said. According to her and Hariharan, the stigma is still strong among people in India, though relatively less among the youth than in the older generations. People are still hesitant to talk about depression and mental health because it is still an uncomfortable and taboo topic.
Problematic views among the youth
But even among the youth, not all is perfectly progressive. Over coffee, when I asked Prabha if she watched "13 Reasons Why" and what she thought about it, she illustrated the problematic views among the youth about mental health.
It seems that besides normalization among people unaware of the problem, there is also romanticization among those who know about depression.
“I've noticed a lot of people who don't necessarily have the problem, but they leverage it to get things done and stuff like that,” Prabha said. “To get out of responsibility or accountability.”
We discussed how there are also people who think having a mental illness is cool or poetic in some way, not knowing the real struggles and ugliness that come with it. This leads to people talking about depression without being very knowledgeable about it.
“So it's really sad,” Prabha said, “because majority of Indian society is not aware that such a problem exists; a bunch of us know that it exists, and among that bunch, quite a lot of them tend to glorify it and romanticize it, you know. So there are only like very few people who are reasonable and objectively true about it.”
Prabha watched the first season of "13 Reasons Why", but she couldn’t bring herself to watch the second season that came out about a month before I talked to her. She said she disapproves of how Hannah Baker, the main character, leverages her suicide against all the people she had a grudge against in order to get revenge.
“So you need to be able to look at it and isolate the two things,” Prabha said. “One is suicide, and two is whatever she's doing is wrong, irrespective of the fact that she is suicidal or having depression.”
Basically, you can acknowledge that someone is depressed and is having problems making decisions, but that doesn’t make it okay for them to justify the bad decisions they’ve made with depression, according to Prabha.
“So it doesn't make it okay for you to do bad things intentionally,” she explained, “and use your mental health as an excuse, you know? That sort of thing.”
Prabha herself has come across people like that who hurt people and used their depression as an excuse. Prabha said she tried to talk to them about it but, unable to change their views, ended up cutting off their friendship in the end.
“See that is a thing, human beings really aren't that receptive to change,” Prabha said. “One of the most difficult things you can try to do is change a person's attitude or belief, because it's very complicated. And it's vital that if you're trying to change someone's views, that you do it right. And you need to make sure that you're equipped to do that, and you're equipped to handle the consequences if things don't go as you planned. And all this can be emotionally taxing as well.”
In the end, you need to make a decision of whether or not you still need to be around that person, which Prabha said can be a very hard choice to make if the “emotionally manipulative” person is a close friend or family member.