In a country that is defined by societal norms and pressures, it is no surprise that mental health would be an issue. People have resorted to things like rat poison and other pesticides just to escape the misery that they have to face every single day of their lives. We pride ourselves on our culture but sometimes it is this very culture that causes mental health issues among numerous people.
We have a set idea of normalcy in our minds and somehow we cannot see past that. If we see something or someone that is different or beyond our personal standards of normalcy, we automatically assume that there is something wrong. If someone does not express themselves the way we want them to, does not act the way we want them to, chooses to deal with pain or grief in a different way, that person is automatically labelled as abnormal or crazy.
Anxiety and depression are struggles in themselves and people dealing with them are the only ones who know how bad it can get, sometimes all you want to do is curl up in a ball and disappear from the word. You don’t want to exist because it gets too much. Social interaction becomes a chore and sometimes even breathing seems too much of an effort. And yet people find a way to make it worse for those who are going through these things. Let’s get one thing straight; nobody in this world wants to feel depressed or have any other problem, nobody wants to feel that helpless when it comes to their own mental health. And yet we have people who assume the other person is “overreacting” or “too emotional.”
We don’t get to decide what is normal or what a normal reaction to something is. Human beings were made to be different and imperfect so what we need to understand is that what might not hurt or emotionally hit one individual might have a different impact on another. What might cause one person to react in a certain way might not cause another to react at all. Everyone has their own capacity to deal with things and the sooner we understand this, the better it will be.
Most of the recent suicide attempts were either by young women who had been living under poor conditions and had abusive in-laws or kids who were facing problems at home or in school. Perfection is something we as humans always seem to crave in one another. We look for it in our children and in their spouses.
We have a set standard of perfection that we want to be fulfilled and if it is not we tend to say or do things that end up hurting people. Words have power and they can both heal a person or completely shatter a person. The standards we have set are nothing but another measure of the perfection that is actually impossible to attain. So let’s try to use words to heal rather than break. We can be the reason someone does not slip into depression or has dark thoughts. Instead of mocking a person for being depressed, let’s reach out to them. Let’s be better.
The writer is a marketing student and can be reached at [email protected]