The Stigma
Even if someone knows they have depression, they face a battle with the stigma.
“Stigma - social stigma - has got a very long history,” Kumar said, tracing it back to when people with physical illnesses like leprosy, tuberculosis or HIV, or social issues like poverty and prostitution were isolated from society due to the heavy stigma. “It's quite easy for the society to instantly label, if you go through many of the social psychology theories, how isolation occurs forcibly by the society for the another person. So it seems well explained that social stigma is something quite very important for the topic of mental health.”
“Young people can’t be depressed”
Netto described that people in India tend to think young people don’t, or shouldn’t, experience depression. He said he’s heard people say that only married people go through depression.
“They say, ‘Indha vayasile unakku enna da depression,’ like that. (At this age, what depression do you have?),” Netto said. “They are not even considering that we are also humans, we too go through depression.”
Anton Abilash Netto
But Kumar said that depression should be considered as something normal that everyone goes through. They shouldn’t be isolated because of it.
“You shouldn’t talk about depression”
Even opening up about depression is a challenge because it’s considered something so dark that people don’t, or shouldn’t, even talk about, everyone said when I talked to them.
Ravichandran didn’t even talk to his friends about his depression. I asked him why.
“I don't know, maybe,” he laughed, “I was too like, ‘Talking about depression is not a good thing,’ and just maybe I think like that, maybe because of the society? I don't know.”
So he didn’t even open up to his friends because he felt like it was something he shouldn’t talk about.
“It’s just a phase, stop seeking attention”
Hariharan heard a lot of people tell her it was just a phase. She said that when people talk about depression in India, it’s not taken seriously. Especially if you try to talk to adults.
People tend to say things like, “Just get over it,” “It’s not that important,” and “You don’t need to focus on that; focus on your career and life goals and the depression will automatically go away.”
One of the problems associated with depression is calling people who try to talk about their experiences as attention-seeking. This is problematic because Prabha said that, besides never really feeling comfortable talking about it, she didn’t feel like she even could talk about concerns for her mental health within her circle of friends.
Depression can affect a student’s ability to perform well in school, because symptoms in the DSM-5 include a diminished or absence of pleasure in activities as well as a difficulty in concentration. But when depression starts to affect a person’s academic performance, it is often mislabeled as simply slacking off.
To adults, Hariharan said depression is like it's something that young people invented by themselves when they are not sad and satisfied with our life.
“If someone says that they're depressed, the first thing what youngsters would do at this age will be like, 'Are you okay? Do you want to talk about it?’ they'll ask,” she said. “But if we talk to people who are older than us, they'll be like, 'It’s common. The more you grow up, the more you'll experience sadness in your life. So you'll get used to it.’ Which doesn't exactly cheer up a person.”
And if a person gets past the stigma of opening up and talking about it, they face the next challenge: seeking treatment.
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NDTV video "Let's Talk About Depression"
“If you take medicine, there’s something wrong with you”
While plenty of therapists are available to diagnose and treat people with depression, the idea of having to take medication for it is met with resistance due to the stigma associated with it. Hariharan described that if you take medicine for something, there’s something wrong with you.
“And I don't want people who are depressed to think there's something wrong with them because it's normal,” Hariharan said.
The World Health Organization’s India branch cited the National Mental Health Survey in a document about depression in India, saying that one in 20 people in India over 18 years of age have suffered from depression at least once in their lifetime. Despite depression being something so many people experience in their life, it clearly isn’t easy to talk about it or make the decision to seek medication.
Prabha said she’s sure she never felt comfortable talking about her mental health situation, but that was only part of the problem. The other part was the environment.
“So I think it's both,” she said. “Like the environment isn't very receptive to people like this, and because people grow up in such an environment they themselves are closed off to sharing stuff.”