{"id":9707,"date":"2022-08-23T21:21:13","date_gmt":"2022-08-23T21:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thejetboy.com\/?p=9707"},"modified":"2023-03-08T08:36:12","modified_gmt":"2023-03-08T08:36:12","slug":"it-is-ok-to-not-be-ok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thejetboy.com\/it-is-ok-to-not-be-ok\/","title":{"rendered":"It is OK to not be OK…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>11 Minute, 3 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n

This is perhaps one of my longest under-construction articles. I started writing it when I graduated (April 2021) and since then it has undergone 2 title changes, 3 complete re-writes, and countless edits so that it is OK to be published. At one point I was even wondering if I need to publish it at all. But I guess it took me 16 months and countless hours in front of my screen to figure out that this particular article is never going to be OK, and I don’t need to publish it, I want to. So, what is it that I am going to bore you with today? Mental health. A topic that everyone talks about, but only a few care enough to do something about it. Why am I writing about it? Well because I want to talk about:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  • The Stigma:<\/strong> We all know someone with mental health issues, but it’s never us. So it’s me opening up about my personal experience of seeking help. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • The Steps: <\/strong>Perhaps the hardest thing is to open up and seek the help that one needs. So I will also be sharing some tips and tricks that helped my case. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • The Shoutout:<\/strong> My mental health took a serious hit during Corona and I needed a lot of help to make it better. So it’s also a shout-out to all the people who helped me.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
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    • The Stigma: <\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

      “It’s all in your head, just shake it off!” or ” You are strong, you got this!” is some of the most common response I got when I tried to discuss my not feeling so well, about not having the energy to just sit in front of my laptop and get that work done, or just cook myself something nice, or even just get out of my bed. Most of us find it redonkulous to suggest a person with a broken bone to “sleep on it” or “shake it off”, however, it’s perfectly alright to say this when the most complicated part of our body is having troubles. I initially had a lot of resentment for people giving out this advice, but with my experience, I figured out it’s not their fault. We as a society tend to trivialize and attach a stigma to things that we don’t fully understand. As much as we want to be this 21st-century iHuman, our understanding of the human brain has not kept pace with the change. When we hear “They have mental health issues”, our general tendency is to imagine a crazy maniac on a rampage or a sad person locked up in their room. But according to a recent study by Johns Hopkins University, 1 in 4 Americans has a mental health disorder of some kind [1], a number that could be even higher given how afraid people are of just accepting they are not okay. How afraid? Well, Doctors during the pandemic forwent mental health help for fear of losing their license to practice [2]. This my dear readers is America, we have not even touched Asian societies, where mental health is considered “A rich people thing”. I kid you not, I had the privilege of hearing “Akash, you are becoming too European. Indians Don’t suffer from such things.”, indeed we don’t, Indians just choose to die instead, 17 of them every hour [3] back in 2019, imagine what happened during the pandemic. Now coming to the sad people locked up in their rooms, know about Leonardo DiCaprio, Lady Gaga, Chester Bennington, and Cheslie Kryst, and maybe read up on them. But my personal favorite is the case of a big-time Indian movie star Sushant Singh Rajput [4], a celebrity who committed suicide. A “rich person” who had clinical depression in a country that is soo reluctant in accepting mental health issues, that for months it was all the nation could talk about. Not that, mental health is a real thing, but how he was tricked into believing he had mental health issues. In fact, despite the doctors clearly stating it was a suicide, the case is still under investigation by the FBI equivalent of the Indian investigation agency. Which is still investigating everything from murder to drugs to money laundering, to aliens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      How deep does this stigma go? Well deep enough, many people often believe that going to therapy or even accepting that one has a mental health issue is a sign of weakness. Deep enough that phrases like “Fake it till you make it”, and “Suck it up!” are much more popular amongst the youth than “Ask for help if you need it.”. Deep enough, for people to anonymize their struggle and go into the dark allies of the internet to seek help rather than just asking the people around them. Deep enough that it’s okay to share memes with your so-called friends about mental health, but not okay to just say that you are the person in that meme, the irony of this connected world. What can you do about it? Well, that is what the next section is all about. <\/p>\n\n\n

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      Businessman climbing higher stairs<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n