By: Soumya (11a) , Aradhya and Shalini (10 B)

Interviewer: Mental health issues are an increasing concern nowadays, what can we do about this to ensure that fewer people are affected by mental health problems?

Kriti ma’am: It is everyone’s responsibility to make sure that they take care of their mental health just as much as they take care of their physical health. Taking care of your mental hygiene, and ensuring that you acknowledge your mental state as a part of your lifestyle will help you in maintaining a healthy mind. 

Shyamala ma’am: I totally agree. Self-motivation plays a big role in mental health, along with discipline. Approaching life with pessimism plays a big role in negatively affecting the mind. There is no reason why anyone needs to be egoistic in what they do and say, and they should look at things positively. Self-consciousness, self-reflection, and self-correction also play key roles in maintaining your mental health: Think about what you are about to say and do before you do them; think about why you did something; think about what you can do differently next time. Most importantly, talk to those who are experienced, by which I mean, experienced in life as a whole, whether it’s your parents, teachers, or psychologists like us. 

Interviewer: Mental health in India is not taken very seriously. Many people believe that if one feels lonely or despondent it is simply an excuse to get away from something. Clearly, this is not true, but in a country with such beliefs how will we bring about the much needed awareness and destigmatize mental health issues?

Kriti Ma’am: We need to start with the youth and make sure that learning about mental health starts from the primary level at school. It should be made part of the curriculum and along with other health check ups, mental health check ups should also be provided to students. When children begin to understand the true value of mental health, they will tell others, and soon enough it will spread across the country and to a much larger scale. 

Shyamala Ma’am: In earlier times, most people lived in large joint families, where if one wanted to approach someone to talk to,  they had a lot of choice. This means that there was no need for them to approach anyone outside their family. Approaching a psychologist for emotional support was never a part of their culture. In this day and age, we have a lot of nuclear families and so, people no longer have many options in whom to approach for emotional support. Since the culture carries on, people are not free to express their emotions to outside people and their thoughts are piled on top of each other. We need to ensure that children and adults alike know that approaching a psychologist to help with a mental issue is just as important and normal as approaching a doctor for dealing with a fever. 

Interviewer: It is believed that social media has an adverse effect on studies. However, a recent study conducted showed that the mental health of teenagers is unaffected by the amount of time they spend on social media. Do you agree with this? Why or why not?

Kriti ma’am: I do not agree completely: there are always two sides to a story, and similarly, there are both positive and negative effects that social media can have on a teenager. In today’s day and age, children are shown to have much weaker eye muscles than they did before as a result of increased screen time, not to mention that problems such as ADHD are much more common. When a child is developing, he/she needs other stimulation as opposed to only staying indoors: they require exercise and outdoor activities, and a lot of screen time can negatively impair their development. It can impair their growth as well as their gross and fine motor skills. These days, children aren’t as curious or eager to explore new things as they were before, the cause being social media. The concept of social media itself is very superficial, where people depend on likes and comments to boost their confidence, and shows that people lack confidence in themselves. Having actual face to face interactions with your friends and family can be vital to your development as a whole. 

Shyamala ma’am: Social media not only includes Facebook and other networking sites, but movies and such, which have a larger reach and are capable of impacting people on a very large scale. I believe they do affect a person’s mental well-being, especially because violence is very dominant in movies nowadays, and may unconsciously cause people to behave aggressively. Most people do not know this, but even minor disturbances in their day to day lives can build up and damage their behavior in the long run. 

Interviewer: Modern statistics show that women, on average, are affected by mental health issues nearly twice as much as men. What do you think could be the reasons behind this? 

Shyamala ma’am: Well to start off, I don't agree with this statement. I believe that women are much stronger than men and they have the unique ability of multitasking which men do not have. Men cannot handle many things at once. Before, men were allowed to show multiple emotions, mostly anger and frustration, whereas women were emotionally suppressed and were not allowed by societal expectations at the time to express their thoughts and desires, because of which they had to deal with a lot of bottled up emotions, but now, that is not the scenario and women continue to become stronger everyday and are capable of dealing with even the toughest of situations.

Kriti Ma’am: I agree with Shyamala ma’am. But then again there are two perspectives in this case as well. Some mental health problems are more susceptible to men and some towards women. Many people believe, as a result of societal expectations in the past, that men are not supposed to cry or show their emotions. As a result, they feel less inclined to actually express themselves, and are prone to bottling up their emotions. Not only can this impact their mental well-being, but these situations may lead to an increased risk of health problems such as cardiac arrests. 

Interviewer: What lead you and your students to create a support group? How will it benefit the students (those in the support group as well as the others who want to approach them)?

 Kriti Ma’am: Well, the main objective behind creating this support group was to have a group of students that other students could talk to; a group of peers with which they would feel comfortable expressing themselves. Having peers talk with other students their own age enables a sense of connectivity with them and can also enable them to have face to face interactions.

Shyamala ma’am: I think the main reason that we created a student support group as opposed to one run by only teachers was because students see teachers as authoritative figures, and as a result, cannot express themselves very freely in front of them. This is just human tendency: we tend to listen to our friends more than we tend to listen to our parents or teachers, and in this case, we thought that we could use that fact to allow students to openly talk about anything they may be going through, and allow the support group to act as a channel to convey their issues.

Interviewer: Thank you Teachers. This discussion will surely help our readers!