Mental Health - A Stigma

"What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor and more unashamed conversation." - Glenn close

When someone generally talks about the concept of mental health, one directly perceives it as how emotionally balanced a person is. By emotional balance, people mean how stress-free a person is, how managed he/she is, how complying he/she is to the societal norms, does he or does he not showcase any sort of deviant behaviour or by the nature of one’s thoughts. But when it comes to balancing it or working towards it, people are ashamed of it because of the stigma that exists in society even today. What people fail to understand is that the stigma is made by themselves and they’re the only ones capable of destroying it. What the society needs to understand is that because of this stigma, the chances of deviant behaviour in a person can increase as it stops the person to talk about their mental state or to express what they’ve experienced or the kind of pain they’ve felt. This leads to repressing one’s thoughts and emotions which becomes a part of their unconscious. As these repressed negative thoughts and emotions become a part of one’s psyche, it leads to the development of feeling of revenge. The person starts to feel that the others should also understand and feel the pain they’ve been through. These feelings start accumulating in a person’s mind which leads to the formation of a lot of negative energy which if not constructively put to use, leads to deviant behaviour. For instance, if we talk about the people who sexually harass women, there is a possibility that people who showcase such behaviour may have suffered in their past and would have repressed all the negative memories from it, it could be family issues, or an upbringing in an unhealthy environment or sometimes even social factors like poverty, etc. , such people do not have anyone to look up to in their life. They have less intrinsic motivation to look forward to their lives and deal with their problems. Thus, the energy is put to use in a wrong manner, which makes them showcase such behaviour which is socially unacceptable as we are made to learn to respect each other from the very beginning. ​ There is one other section of the society who is involved in sexual harassment of the opposite or in some cases same sex as they feel that they are over privileged or posses more power than others. Sometimes when people are getting more than their needs, they develop a negative attitude towards other people in the society. Such people look down to others and consider them to be needy. This section may also include the youth as they feel they can do anything to prove themselves to others. The youth feels that they can impose their power or dominate others. Sometimes it becomes a way for the youth to unleash their anger. While some other individuals come under peer pressure and make wrong decisions. We, humans, are living in a century where development in each sector is given importance. Be it politics, technology, social work, industries, agriculture, etc. They say that development is the backbone of any nation. Without the development of interventions, you’re stagnant because you’re not growing.

Takeaway Message

What I believe is that the backbone of any nation is the people and how they function intellectually and psychologically. ​ It’s very easy to gain knowledge but very hard to impart it. ​ The world could become a better place to live by if you want it to be. ​ So, start by talking and caring for others, because, behind every sweet smile, there is a bitter sadness that no one can ever see and feel. ​ Thank you for reading through, hope it was useful for you and if you like it, motivate others also to work upon the same.