Maintaining Mental Stability

Given the fact that mental illness is a grave issue affecting people across the world, October 8 is observed as World Mental Health Day to not only create awareness but also bring to the forefront new methods of dealing with this problem. Ela Thakur explains how socio drama can be used as a tool to regain mental health.

- Ela Thakur

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), India is the most ‘depressed’ country in the world. In fact, the country faces a serious mental health crisis with an estimated 56 million people suffering from depression and 38 million from anxiety disorder. Are there any ways to combat depression? In my earlier article I had written about psychodrama, which provides a solution to cure mental problems of individuals through drama. Drama is a source of entertainment for most but here it is used as therapy to deal with mental ailments. This article focuses on sociodrama. Psychodrama and sociodrama are like opposite sides of the same coin.

Psychodrama focuses on the life of an individual while sociodrama focuses on a common theme, issue or situation that a group wants to examine through verbal discussion or debate. Psychodrama deals with personal relationships while sociodrama focuses on professional, workplace or public relationships. Here the group itself becomes the protagonist of the session, i.e. one group leads other groups to solve problems as their own problem. Both psychodrama and sociodrama are based on American psychiatrist Jacob Moreno’s theory of spontaneity, creativity and his role theory of personality. A special form of sociodrama is ‘The living newspaper’, which was first developed by Moreno in Vienna in 1920-22.