Mental Health

  Can you remember the biggest fight you've had with someone? Anyone…. just put a deep thought into it, Sky's the limit.

Was it with your classmate at the eighth grade? When a basketball match didn't go fair and you both had a heated debate with an after school showdown, face swollen and body full of bruises? Or was it with your other friend, a girl, with differences in opinion and you found her spreading rumours about you or something? I bet you guys never spoke with each other again.  Could it have been the time when you fought with your sibling for a TV remote and accidentally ended up hurting them so badly that they needed stitches and wouldn't talk to you for a week or two? Maybe it was a fight with your own parents, just because of the teenage phase of rebellion or maybe due to the excessive restrictions or just because they wouldn't buy you your new phone. Which one do you think is the biggest fight you have fought in your life?

 Now, I can't be a hundred percent sure if everyone will get what I mean but I do believe that most of us know that the greatest fight we've ever fought, the longest and the most difficult battles we have had to face, survive and hopefully overcome is probably a battle with ourselves. It's a kind of fight not everyone can see nor can be shown too perfectly even if we want to. Kind of fight free from external bruises, but equally traumatic with scars quite difficult to detect, quite easily misunderstood by most and unbelievably too deeply intertwined with the day to day life. It's the battle with our mind.

 In life tension and troubles are like a SIM card with the promotional messages from the operator isn't it? They are gonna send those damn SMS whether you like it or not. Even if you block them they send the messages from another source. Same is with the problems.  You try to avoid getting into one of them but end up getting into another one anyways. 

With the growing complexity in the medical prowess, diseases that took millions of lives before are now prevented with just one shot of vaccine. We even seem to be getting close to the cure of AIDS and even many forms of Cancer itself. Even in such an advancement, mental health is generally excluded from the picture of concern at least in the context of developing countries like Nepal. All the blame can't be passed off just to the health sectors for their limited access to the treatment, counselling and therapies for different forms of mental problems, because the society along with its norms and values have an equal share of blame to it as it still fails to acknowledge the mental problems to be genuine, that requires attention and support. As a matter of fact, the picture is quite the opposite in countries like Nepal I would say. The fighters, the victims, the sufferers, after being known to be fighting with some sort of mental illness become another victim of social discrimination with most inhumane treatment they'd ever get.

Detecting the problem is definitely a difficult task to achieve if you don't want to have an open mind and acceptance. As difficult it is to identify the problems, it is relatively easier to help others deal and fight with it. It's not at all difficult actually. Not treating them like a monster or an invisible man would do most of the trick. All we have to do is put ourselves in their shoes and let them know that we're with them in this.

When you are too clueless to understand what is happening in life, what steps should be taken, what plans should be made, you don't want your family and friends to worry about you but you don't know how to explain the situation you are in. You can't explain it because you yourself can't understand what's wrong.  And with this narrowed down view of the society towards the mental health, you're not left with an option to seek help neither. Sometimes you feel bad, you feel sad, overwhelmed with grief maybe, but you have no specific reason for it. Some events in life might be so minor, not even big enough to be considered as an issue to an everyday person, but sometimes such minute of events make you want to scream at the top of your lungs, makes you feel like throwing your body at the ground and cry like a kid, pull your hair out or something but you end up doing none of those things. You carry a big smile on your face instead and carry on with the so-called "Normal" life. Why? The answer is simple actually. Just because it's easier this way. It's much easier than explaining what you are going through to someone if they don't want to understand nor acknowledge the battle you're fighting.

This is just an example for one form of the mental problems and probably the biggest one to take lives of most of the people suffering from mental problems throughout the world, and it's Depression. However in most of the other forms of mental problems as well, understanding, accepting, showing your support is the first and the biggest step to help them fight with it.

I mean, I wouldn't want to be treated like a joke by someone just because I shared a genuine problem of mine with them. Having a confidence in yourself is a very important thing when you are uncertain about life. Because, you are certainly gonna feel underappreciated, made fun of, maybe you'll even feel like you're left alone to rot, not being respected for things you believe in, or you yourself might not be able to accept you as you are now. If the validations and criteria of "You" and your life given by the things other than yourself stop bothering you, you probably won't feel like a joke. And to give a boost in that self-confidence, it would be really nice to be supported by, listened to, understood and accepted by at least one person in this world. Sometimes it would really be nice to be heard by someone else that you matter and life is so much more than this short moment of grief you're facing. In the lowest of the low in your life, you'd definitely love to have someone to listen to you and share your thoughts. You definitely want them to make you understand that no human is greater than the other that someone's absence would make others' lives easier. If I died today, the spot I have left is never going to be filled in the world. There is no one in this world who is a better Piyush than me myself. Nobody can be a better son to Rajan, Nobody could be a better brother named Piyush to Charu and Kanchan, nobody could be a better crazy friend named Piyush for Asim, Ashwin, Gyanendra and Anuska, nobody could be better roommate named Piyush for Sarban. My dreams would die along with me. My parents and friends would die along with me. My God would die along with me. The time itself would cease to exist, or stop along with me. You would certainly love to be reminded about that as well when you are at your lowest. You'd want a reason to believe that not only the good things, happy times, good friends and love makes life but the bad things, bad experiences, sadness, evil snake friends and heartbreaks are equally important for you to learn and to grow as a human. The mental burden we have to carry out, the fights we have to fight silently, the monsters we have to live with everyday; I think they are also a phase of life and should be accepted by everyone,along with the fighters. Accepting, understanding the feelings would probably help us move forward to make a better version of ourselves. I mean, nobody is perfect in every way. If we can accept ourselves as we are, we should try and embrace it rather than isolate and treat them like a monster. We have been so deeply involved in the stories and fairy tales we've heard and read in childhood, which set up a false image of perfection, beauty and self worth that when reality actually hit us, we were left stranded, trying to find ourselves in the new face of society and life, where we somewhat loathe ourselves for not being "perfect"; not being as ideal as mentioned in the fables. This might also be one of the reasons for the increasing rate of mental illnesses in the youngsters  in the recent years. The feeling of not being perfect, ideal in this world which has a changing definition of perfection everyday. Teens might be being bullied physically and psychologically for not being up to the trend or for being slightly different from the others. With suicide rates increasing by the day and violence due to difference in mental outlook increasing by the hour, steps we as individuals can make to prevent or even overturn the situation could be accepting mental health as a fundamental and accepting, understanding, listening to and helping the ones fighting with it in every way we can so that it no longer shall be seen as a taboo in the society. It would make the job of the mental health activists and doctors a lot easier as well.