Mental health

While it is great that awareness is being created about emotional and mental health issues, and especially in these trying times, addressing mental health is the need of the hour as is addressing the pandemic itself (“Lady Gaga, Glenn Close join Prince Harry and Oprah for mental health TV series,” May 11, Gulf Today).

The causes of mental health too need to be addressed. At times, it results from the loss of loved ones like in the case of Harry losing his mother. It could also result from the lack of support with such losses. And then there are other reasons such loss of a job, and thus the draining of finances. In these cases the panic is real: where does one get the money to feed oneself and the family? To pay the mortgage? To pay for the fuel? To advise a person in this situation to seek medical help would be rubbing salt in the wound.

The mental anguish in this case has a clearer solution – address the problem. And here is where the government support comes in. The government must be responsible for having the back of its citizens. To offer unemployment benefits, to create jobs, to defer mortgage payments to a later date.

Sometimes, we must understand that the glossy manner in which mental health issues are presented on television by people who have it all, isn’t necessarily the type of mental anguish that the common man deals with. A lot has to do with state welfare, trust in the government and in the social structure and a good network of healthcare and welfare.

Denmark is the happiest country. The reason is attributed to the government having their backs. This in contrast to India which ranks 138 something on the happiness index list.

Joyce D — By email