Mental Health: Open the door of acceptance
Nazia Farid
“What is mental health?” is a question of which more than half of our generation doesn’t know the answer.
Mental health is the social, personal, and emotional well-being of minds. It helps us understand our decision-making and how we react during stressful or crucial times. Mental well-being determines how an individual will spend his life and how he will avail of the opportunities life will present to him. It also includes the social ties he will maintain and his behavior towards himself and people. There are a decent amount of consequences if we ignore mental well-being.
We will be losing lives, talents, and skillful people drastically. It will form a destructive society with individuals entirely unaware of themselves and their purpose. It is one of the most avoided factors in our lives, especially in places deeply rooted in customs and rituals. Gilgit Baltistan is one of them. Mental health awareness is likely non-existing in the
area. If someone suffers from mental health illness, then the person is associated with a kind of possession. The treatment for such a possession continues till the person reaches a critical stage. Unfortunately, the person ends up taking his life or cutting off his ties from social activities for a lifetime. This behavior of peers is closing the doors for accepting mental health issues existing and affecting globally. The reluctant behavior towards such a grave issue causes difficulties for those suffering from the illness.
The sufferers can not address the issue themselves, and they are not able to answer why it is happening what is happening to them. They can not channel their desires, dreams, goals, and behaviors. However, they behave violently or use unacceptable means to get to the end. If a leader does not address the issue and get rid of it, then the leading team can not excel in the race of life. Likewise, if elders do not address and accept it, the sufferer would undermine the issue while facing himself and will deny it. It will cause him to put an invisible but destructive veil on the battle he will be fighting within himself. The person will also be in the denial phase and will not be able to find the purpose or goal of his life. It will also cause him to affect his self-esteem because he will be ashamed of what he is feeling as it will be against the value of the society in which he will be living. With all these results of just being reluctant towards a crucial diagnosis, how can we expect a healthy mind individual in our society?
There are many factors due to which an individual end up with such mental health issues. If we try to accept and address the mental health issues, it will be easier to trace down the core reason.
Childhood trauma can be one of the reasons for mental health issues. He might have the trauma due to bullying of students or the unacceptable behavior of a conventional teacher, or it can be any other possible reason. This trauma can be resolved by addressing and resolving it. It is not only the individual’s responsibility rather as a part of society it is also our responsibility to help him out.
It is very common to demean a student in front of everyone in a full class in most schools and colleges, especially in underdeveloped places like areas of Gilgit-Baltistan. There is no ethics and no understanding of human right violation. It is not necessarily taking a life or hurting someone physically is called a violation of rights but there is also something called emotional and mental abuse. Every person has the right to claim self-respect, and violating someone’s selfrespect is an unforgivable crime against humanity. Demeaning behavior received by the institution can deeply mark someone’s personality. It is highly needed to check up on the child to assure his safety from emotional abuse that leads to mental health disturbance.
There is also a trend in Asia that is drawing a comparison between the children. Everyone on earth is born with his abilities and skills, nobody looks the same likewise, and nobody is created in the same way. Every individual is different in his way. We should let him fly and discover his abilities on his own.
We associate unreal expectations with our child and put him under high pressure for a lifetime. If he cannot fulfill the expectations then he tends to fall into the pit of low self-esteem. Low selfesteem is the direct path toward an unhealthy mind. Every person can not fall into the same spectrum as we want them to. It’s just like expecting an elephant to fly.
Excessive and unhealthy usage of social media is one the most crucial reason for mental health issues. The world is a global village now, and we belong to the underdeveloped country trying to compare and put on the life we see on the internet. The excessive usage of social media releases dopamine, and we become intensively addicted to instant results. Life doesn’t give us instant results, and we try to apply the rules of the internet over life which fails our expectations. We are taught how to use a gadget but not how to Detox our lives in a global village. We spend hours on social media and detach ourselves from real life. Instant gratification leads us to forget our goals and ambitions in life. When there is no goal or purpose, then there is no life.
We need to keep on checking our child since he starts his life. It is highly needed to teach our children about mental well-being and human rights, we need to teach them detoxification of anything that is giving them unreal pleasure. We need to teach our children that they are not the passenger of the mind rather they, themselves are in the driving seat. As responsible individuals of a society, we need to understand that mental health issues are the most important ones to be addressed and accepted.
