Urban lifestyles, academic pressure & stigma fuel mental illness among Indian youth

Modern lifestyles have come with associated ills, both of the body and the mind. Indeed, mental health-related disorders have spurted, affecting a vast segment of populations across the world. More worryingly, a sizeable segment of the affected happens to be teenagers and youth, and sometimes even children!

Study-related stress, peer and parental pressure, nuclear families and working parents, and restricted access to sporting and social activities have stressed the young minds like never before today. In extreme cases, such situations have triggered suicides - an incidence which has been on the rise.

In India too, the alarming trend of mental illness has been quite conspicuous, encompassing in its vicious fold people from diverse age groups. In developing countries like India, poverty and associated factors, too, are sometimes known to trigger such abnormal behaviour.

The rapid spread of globalization and urbanization and the consequent frenetic pace that has gripped people in their quest for never-ending materialistic success has a lot to do with our behavioural changes. This has led to more stress, tension and depression in a manner not witnessed before.

The more people are associating happiness with material wealth, the more they are distancing themselves from happiness. This, together with stress in family life, relationships, work place, etc., forms an interconnected chain that is increasingly shackling us.

Like in any other illness, mental illness too has a cure. Unfortunately, people tend to distance themselves from curative interventions out of ignorance, social stigma, etc. For the curative interventions to follow there is an urgent need for identifying the prevalent patterns, outcome, treatment gap and associated disabilities of mental illness. We also need to have an assessment of the mechanism available for mental healthcare across the country: Students, too, are increasingly getting vulnerable to mental health issues due to the insensitive evaluation system which subjects the young minds to utmost pressure.

While the deteriorating mental health scenario calls for a matching response mechanism, matters have not been helped by the slow progress of the district mental health programmes in terms of reach and coverage. The State government should treat the matter seriously and ensure that the programmes deliver quality services. It is also time the government came up with a comprehensive State mental health policy, formulating explicit action plans, enhancing mechanisms for integration, dedicated financing, devising mechanisms for accelerated human resources, improving medicine supply and logistics, and monitoring frameworks to provide the widest possible coverage to affected citizens.