Mental Health stigma in the 21st Century

Representational image Creative Commons

As I sit out and watch the rain drip from the balcony , I wait for the cup of tea to join me and my restless mind. It has been gloomy, not just the weather but the climate.

Many people have been dying because of the coronavirus. I see doctors post videos and pictures of themselves, I see others post about doctors and how it is taking a toll on them, not just physically, but mentally too. So many deaths, the last three years have been very weird. Chester Bennington died by hanging himself. They say he struggled with drug abuse but what he must have gone through, nobody really knows apart from him. How depression has killed more people than suicides or even accidents, nobody realises. And when the following year Avicii cut himself followed by the news of Sushant Singh Rajput hanging himself, I think that was the last straw.

I have had a hard time dealing with all the posts, and I’ve shed a few tears here and there when I watch them perform. But the looming question here that everybody has addressed for a week into these deaths is their mental health. Only a week.

These are thoughts I’m engulfed in when my dad asks me why I haven’t taken a sip of my tea which I’ve been holding in my hand, halfway for the past five minutes. “I’m telling you, it was because of his girlfriend. She must’ve done this because of that director too,” I hear my mother say as my father nods in agreement.

“You don’t know…” I trail off as I realize that I spoke out loud.

“What?” they turn towards me.

“What do we not know?”

“He committed suicide because of deteriorating mental health that he thought nobody could help him with,” I said.

“Yeah, but his girlfriend definitely murdered him. I saw those youtube videos on it,” my mother says.

“But he committed suicide.”

“But why? Depression doesn’t kill anyone, and he was great in studies too, such a brilliant boy,” my father chimes in.

I was going to have this conversation with them for the umpteenth time, but this time I was better read. I don’t know how that will help me, but I will charge head-on. I will not stigmatize it like the rest of 'em.

Based on real conversations by real people.