Aditi Pangotra and Aakriti Sharma
Recently the news of the suicide of the bollywood star, Sushant Singh Rajput has shook everyone to the core. As soon as the news came out speculations have slowly paved way into the society. Was he going through some financial crises? Was it a sour relationship? Was it something called professional insecurities? Speculations are many. He has left with some unanswered queries which will now always remain unanswered. Mystery continues but no doubt this incident triggered the topic of mental health including illnesses ranging from depression, bipolar to psychosis into limelight.
We don’t know whether his mysterious death has anything to do with mental health or not till proven.. still it opens a new debate towards the mental illness. As per some of the reports he was on treatment from the past six months but no one knew about it until the day of his death.
It leaves us with a very important question here is it the stigma attached to the mental illness that people are afraid to come out of the closet and reach out to others. Had he been suffering from some other physical ailment, he would have had tonnes of well-wishers from the bollywood as well as from outside. His home would have been full of flowers and get well soon cards. But it was mental illness. Some will call u fake and some would label you as an attention seeker. Pathetic but true. And this is not the first time that a celebrity has taken his/her life.
Many other well-known actors have taken this extreme step in the past. So what leads these celebrities to take this extreme step? Is it the fear of losing their stardom, is it being left alone in the crises or is it the loneliness. Well, there can be n number of thoughts going on in the mind of the person who takes this step. But speaking particularly about the stars, they live in a very fast paced world where you have to keep running. If you have got a sprain and u limp, you are left behind. No one actually stops to pick you up and help you finish the race. This feeling of being left alone takes a toll on the mental health but at the same time you have to face cameras with a happy face because sad faces have no buyers. This is exactly where mental illnesses get stigmatized.
Depression for many, is not an actual illness, its a phase which will eventually go. And if the person is finding it difficult to deal with his depression he gets lectured for not being strong enough. If the person even thinks of getting treatment he is persuaded by the family and friends not to go for it as it would give him a label of “insane” by the society as he is seeking treatment from a mental health professional. Atleast Depression is still being talked about after bollywood actress Deepika Padukone came out with it but psychiatric illness does not revolve around depression only. There are a vast majority of disorders which people have no idea about. You must have come across many people on the streets, commonly named by people as “pagals”.
Have you ever thought it to yourself, were they born this way, don’t they have any family, whom they keep talking to or why are they throwing stones/abuses in the air? Have you ever thought about it? You must have but you most probably don’t know what that person is suffering from? Do you? Most of you must have answered to yourself a big no. So the question here is why dont you know about these disorders when you know about cancers, tumors, dengue, malaria and the list goes on. The answer is stigma. The person you see on the road most probably has a family. But the family abandoned him.
In majority of the cases when these kind of illnesses start people especially in small cities like ours, go to faith healers for the cure. When that fails, some of them may pay a few visits to a doctors clinic, and when they dont get instant results, they either abandon them or keep them away from society’s eyes from the fear of being stigmatised. Psychiatric illness is just like any other illness. T
he patient does not choose the illness. The only difference is, it does not leave any overt scars to get sympathies from people but it does leave a big emotional scar on the patient which only he/she can see. We fail as a society when something like the above mentioned case happens. Its high time that we stigmatize the stigma of psychiatric illnesses, to try and understand the pain of the patient suffering from psychiatric illness and help the person to come out of it.
Psychiatric illness is not like a viral fever which will go after a week. Its a long process, the treatment, the follow-ups, the emotional ups and downs that not only the patient but also the family goes through. They do not deserve to be stigmatized but to be cared of. And just like any other illness it can be treated. This is the time to awaken our conscience and hold the hand of the person in need, where we can say that we did our bit to help hear the cry of a person suffering silently. A time when we as a society collectively stigmatize this stigma.
(The authors are Clinical Psychologists )
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