Mind your Mind

 

 

Eversince the winds of economic change swept India, people in general have started using words like “depression, stress, work pressure, anxiety, weekend party, stress relief, antidepressants...’

“Change of lifestyle and work culture are the major factors. When people yearn to earn more money and neglect their physical and personal lives, these kinds of psychological problems occur,” says consulting psychiatrist Dr Swapnil Deshmukh from Pune.

“It is just the change of use of words. Instead of ‘I feel sad’ people started saying ‘I am depressed’; ‘I am restless’ was replaced by ‘I am anxious’ and ‘I am under pressure’ by ‘stress’. Even before globalisation, people had these problems but post-globalisation, the number of people suffering from such ailments has been rising” says Dr B.N. Gangadhar, professor of psychiatry in NIMHANS, Bangalore.

India cannot forget the recent recession which hit the nation’s IT sector. Due to ‘stress’ and ‘depression,’ many young people resorted to suicides; the season even witnessed jaw-dropping rise in the sale of antidepressants.

Is India becoming more and more vulnerable to psychological disorders? ‘Yes’ says a World Health Organization (WHO) finding. According to WHO, “By the year of 2020, India will be the number one country in the world having the highest number of people suffering from mental depression”. Psychiatrists do agree with this finding. “That may also see India becoming the nation with the highest number of suicide cases,” says Dr Deshmukh. But is India ready to face this crisis? “Not at all,” says well known psychiatrist Dr Ashok Pai from Shimoga, Karnataka. “Two per cent of our population suffers from psychosis (disorders like mania, depression, paranoia, hebephrenia ect), another two per cent suffers from neurosis, (anxiety, hysteria, phobia, hypochondriasis, obsessive compulsive disorders etc), four per cent suffers from personality disorders and another two per cent from mental retardation, cerebral fallacy, autism etc. So 12 per cent of our population needs medical help. In India, we have 3,500 psychiatrists, 2,000 clinical psychologists, 2,000 psychosocial workers and 150 psychiatrist nurses. Among these, almost half are settled in foreign countries. Thus, we have around 4,000 doctors for more than 12 crore people,” says Dr Pai.

As the society still considers psychological disorder as a taboo, even the government is not interested in providing facilities needed. “The government is ignorant. Deaths happening in government mental hospitals are glaring examples of that. The government should work on how to improve manpower in this sector. Budgetary allocation is also negligible. We hardly have any national institutions which matches NIMHANS and dedicates itself to psychology,” says Dr Deshmukh.

“The government should provide necessary infrastructure so that treating people with psychological disorders becomes easier. Compared to private mental hospitals, the condition of government mental hospitals is better though,” says Dr Muthukrishnan, consultant psychiatrist in Apollo Hospital, Chennai.

Dr Pai is happy with the awareness created among the public but he expresses his concern over people relating simple physical ailments to psychological disorders. He shoots, “People used to consult physicians and if and only if recommended, they would visit psychiatrists. But now the trend is reversed. Let me narrate an incident. A girl happened to elope and after a few days, the family was able to bring the girl back. They brought her to me and said ‘Till date, no one from our family has eloped. Please let us know whether she has any psychological problem!’”

Children are also at risk. Corporal punishment though prohibited is being practised across the country. “Children committing suicide for silly reasons is the outcome of pressure. High expectation from the parents, corporal punishment at schools and dissemination of unnecessary information through media can be taken as the causes for children committing suicide,” says Dr Muthukrishnan. India needs to have a mind check. Lead a happy life

The points mentioned below are recommended by well known psychiatrists .
Intake of good nutritious food
Daily course of exercise, walking
Good sleep for at least 6 hours a day
Keeping away from alcohol and drugs
Playing outdoor games for 45 minutes a day
Social interaction
Spending good amount of time with family
Not bringing work to home
Learning to enjoy work and finishing it early to avoid pressure at the eleventh hour

Catastrophes in asylums

In Tamil Nadu, around 28 inmates of a mental asylum in Erwadi Durgah were burnt to death as a fire broke in the early morning of August 6, 2001. The inmates were shackled to the poles, most bodies were charred beyond recognition. As an immediate reaction, the then Tamil Nadu government issued an order to close all 15 mental asylums in Erwadi and inmates were taken under the government’s care.
In 2007, the Bombay High Court called four government-run mental hospitals as ‘horrible’ and asked the then principal secretary of health to take action against those hospitals.
Recently, on July 6, 2010, in a mental hospital in Yerawada Mental Hospital in Pune, a schizophrenic patient thrashed another patient to death. Earlier this year on March 25, the same hospital had witnessed a similar incident where one of the inmates died on the spot.