Shaheen Bhatt stresses on conversation around mental health at school-level; Anna Chandy says important to understand that clinical depression is an illness

The uncertainty around the pandemic has exacerbated mental health issues, especially for women.


The Covid-19 pandemic and the unprecedented disruption and uncertainty that it has caused on social and economic activities have exacerbated mental health issues among all segments of the country’s population, especially for women.


Awareness and recognition of mental illness as a real issue and removing the stigma for an open discussion are key to address this crisis, according to experts who took part in an ET Women’s Forum panel discussion on ‘Beating the Lockdown Blues’.

“It’s important for us first to understand that clinical depression is an illness, and depression and anxiety are predominant in our country,” said Anna Chandy, founder of counselling firm Anna Chandy & Associates. Besides taking cognisance of it, we need to take steps to break the stigma and encourage people to open up and ensure they get adequate support, she said. “They don’t need to suffer, and they don’t need to be labelled,” Chandy said in a discussion moderated by Pragya Tiwari.

Sharing her own story, author Shaheen Bhatt said: “Depression is different for everyone who experiences it… I didn’t realise what was happening to me was depression. I, as a teenager, thought I was crazy. I thought there was something wrong with me... I was constantly sad, for reasons I couldn’t put my finger on.” Experts said seeking help at the right time is important in cases of mental illness. Also, there is no one solution or therapy for everyone.

There is a bouquet of recourses available to anyone who’s struggling with mental health, experts said. “One therapy doesn’t fit all…a gap that I find in therapy is the inability to find the core piece of information that started the cycle,” said Prakriti Poddar, MD of personalised wellness solutions provider Poddar Wellness.

She stressed the need for social emotional learning in schools – “if there were conversations in school about mental health, mental distress, mental relief, so if we had the vocabulary for it, I think that would have been a clear avenue for people who are suffering, not to feel like they were left out.”

So, are we progressing on the issue of mental health? “I think we’ve taken five steps,” Chandy said. “But today I’m deeply concerned and anxious that are we actually retracing and moving back three to four steps.”

She said our emotional brain is in an activated state because of the disruption and uncertainty caused by the lockdown. “Any incident, any issue, anything we experience that we individually feel threatened…it intensifies in our mind,” Chandy said. “And that is what happens when we increase public stigma.”

“When a person suffers from mental illness, their family also needs education to understand that this is an illness,” she said.

Asked about the changes that need to be brought about for progress in the field, Poddar said: “Conversations around breaking the silence are important and should be started at the youngest age”. “Parents just need to be more aware of active parenting,” felt Poddar.

One of the key challenges in mental illness is coming up with a clear diagnosis, experts said. “Mental illness, depression, anxiety, mood disorders, these are a scientific fact,” Bhatt said. “What is hard is coming to a very clear diagnosis, because there is no one blood test that can diagnose mental illness. That is because the causes of mental illness are numerous.” It is critical to drive home the scientific fact that mental illness exists, experts said.

“The language we use is critical,” Bhatt said. “At a school level, it is important to start having these conversations because I know that had I been taught about mental health at an earlier stage, I would have understood five or six years earlier what was happening to me, I would have gotten help much sooner.”