Mental Health Stigma in India

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By Ramesh Kumaran

This is in response to one of the articles on stigma surrounding mental health that was published here on Iam1in4. I do not think that there has been any reduction of mental health stigma in India. Be it job placement, ostracism from friends and public, accusations of being a nuisance, accommodation issues, denial of health services or legal help and economic issues, these all indicate a higher rate of stigmatization in India.

Then, of course, when such stigmatization becomes chronic, it becomes internalized. You create an image of yourself as a consequence of your stressful interaction with society. This becomes a living image of a stigmatized individual. It becomes very difficult to break that, because by then it has become ingrained in your mind and soul that you are just that. A stigmatized, incurable case.”I am that” or “Thou art that”.

The bane of our democracy

Our democracy does not think that mental health is a health issue at all. It does not accord that position which lifestyle diseases have today. That’s the bane of our democracy. To be born in such a democracy is not our fault. Psychiatrists who give us a wrong diagnosis and a wrong prescription, and the adverse side effects arising out of it, are not our responsibility. Losing a job for no good reason is not our responsibility. If all that is mentioned were our responsibility then, excluding us, the vast majority are irresponsible.

People with lifestyle diseases are being funded by the government, otherwise they would, too, be leading a stigmatized and crippled life. So dear Oprah Winfrey, do not say that we alone are responsible for our maladies. It’s a collective responsibility and the etiologies are multifactorial. Do you think that the mental health programs are running smoothly? If not, are we responsible for that?

Placebo poisons

Pharmaceutical companies are selling toxic drugs and making billions out of it. These drugs do not work the way they should. Had they worked as per the biochemical models put forth, mental health issues would have remained asymptomatic. Who is responsible for that? Who is running the pharma companies and their clinical trials? Don’t shove their responsibilities on us. Who is allowing the pharma companies to disrupt the various national mental health programs, so that patients will rely only on their placebo poisons? We are not doing it.

It’s an agenda and propaganda to protect the general public, the politicians, the pharma companies… by some corporate spokesperson sitting comfortably inside some studio.

You must take into account the concept of causation, namely The AGENT-HOST-ENVIRONMENT-TIME.