In This City, I am Memory

Another Mental Health Day is coming up. Increasing awareness must be matched with improving access to mental health services

- By Anirudh Kala IS CLINICAL DIRECTOR AT MINDPLUS, LUDHIANA

ANOTHER rainy day, the third in a row. Water falling in sheets and the road looks not very different from the canal flowing next to it. I am glad I am not driving. Rumi is. He is an animal-loving youngster, waiting for his green card or whatever document is required for living in Canada. Most young people in Punjab villages are waiting for it. Many of the old people have already been there and do not want to go back. “There is nobody to talk to” is why, if you ask them.

The hospital is forty minutes away and this is the time when I read my emails. There are three unread. Two are identical, wanting me to click on a link and become rich in ten seconds. The third is a request to come to such and such university and give a talk to students on the World Mental Health Day, on October 10. I will probably say no, and that would be a first.

By the end of the said Mental Health Day, there would have been many seminars, talk shows, discussions and debates. It would also have been pointed out that nearly 2,00,000 Indians die by suicide every year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) figures, and that each suicide inherently is an avoidable death. And that for every completed suicide, there are ten attempted suicides.

That the country’s suicide data is compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) is itself a telling indictment of our country’s attitude towards the massive tragedy called suicide. What will not happen on ‘the’ Day, is a rupee increase in budget for wholesome mental health services. There would surely be a lot of ‘stay positive’ floating around, which to me is throwing the onus back on the sufferers and amounts to victim shaming. Who thinks negative by choice, anyway?