Q: How is your organisation helping to make mental healthcare services more accessible in our country?
A: We, at Authentic Living, provide therapy and other well-being services to adults and children digitally via virtual platforms to make it accessible to people irrespective of their geography. This also addresses the challenge of privacy and existing social stigma due to lack of awareness as care can be accessed from their homes. Through our AL Assist program, we provide quality care at significantly subsidised charges so that people with limited financial resources have the option of seeing a healthcare professional in their time of need. We also work with institutions and corporates bringing well-being to their employees through EAP services and well-being-focused employee engagement activities. Workplace culture significantly influences one’s mental well-being, so we help organisations build a work culture that is well-being informed and integrates psychological safety when creating workplace policies and people practices.
Along with curative care, we also focus on preventive initiatives such as awareness building via our social media platforms, masterclasses and immersive workshops. Recently we hosted our first international mental health summit where we had 20+ field experts exploring systemic, structural, and socially inflicted inequalities that are often overlooked in the mental health space and ways to address them. We have identified that building personal resourcefulness is critical in enabling mental well-being and hence invest in providing tools and techniques that can be practised by individuals regularly to manage their well-being.
Q: How crucial is it to focus on strengthening the Indian mental health infrastructure? A: It is extremely crucial to focus on strengthening the Indian mental healthcare infrastructure and dedicate resources towards it. Let’s look at some quick statistics, the National Mental Health Survey 2015-16 has estimated that 150 million people across the country are in need of mental healthcare interventions. A 2017 study published in The Lancet Psychiatry reported that number to be 197.3 million; with mental health contributing to 4.7% of the total DALYs in India. DALYs are the sum of the years lost due to premature mortality and the years lived with a disability. The WHO estimates an economic loss of US$ 1.03 trillion in India due to mental health disorders. Statistically, it is clear that this is a significant problem but we are currently facing immense challenges to bridge this gap and cater to the millions of people who need help. We have a severe shortage of mental healthcare professionals in India, there are only 0.75 psychiatrists and 0.067 psychologists for every 1,00,000 population while the recommended ratio is 3 psychiatrists and 1.5 psychologists per 1,00,000 population. They are also primarily located in the urban regions making them inaccessible to rural India. There is a significant lack of awareness about mental health and well-being leading to severe stigmatisation for those who suffer from mental illnesses, this can be addressed via awareness campaigns and using media effectively to normalise mental health and create an informed community. Affordability of quality care is another challenge that we face which deters people from accessing therapy and other services that are necessary to manage illnesses in the long term. This can be addressed via government-funded schemes and by mandating all health insurances to cover mental healthcare costs. We do not have a strong regulatory body that covers the entire spectrum of mental health solutions.
Q: Can you share some easy tips to deal with stress and anxiety?
A: Stress and anxiety are different. Stress can be due to multiple intrinsic or extrinsic drivers such as sudden change, workload, distressing news, physical illness, pressure to perform, and meet expectations. Anxiety is an excessive irrational fear that disrupts daily functioning in individuals, usually a response to the stressors being experienced.
Stress will always exist in some form or the other in life. We need to build our capacity to manage stress and regulate our emotions and responses to stressful situations. People can list down everything that is creating stress in their life and strike out the things that aren’t in their control and create a plan of action for those that are within their control. Also, move the body regularly to shake off the restless energy stored in the body due to stress. Basic mindfulness practices such as focusing on the breath or doing the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique help to reduce anxiety. Another great practice is to spend time in nature and practise some grounding techniques. If self-regulation is becoming difficult, talk therapy, art-based or movement-based therapy also helps.
Q: How can overthinking impact people negatively and what are the ways to curb it?
A: Overthinking can often put people into a negative loop cycle of distress and loss of control which can lead to anxiety, panic attack, depression, high blood pressure, insomnia, and psychosomatic illnesses affecting their mental and physical well-being. It also takes away their ability to stay in the present and experience life as they are often in the past or future which adds to the sense of dread. It can be caused by stress, self-doubt or low self-esteem or it could be a trauma response.
It is necessary to remember that we are not our thoughts, overthinking happens when we lose control of our ability to regulate our thought patterns but it is possible to retrain our brain through self-awareness of what is triggering the overthinking, understanding the distortions that exist in our brains and working through them by challenging it and reframing the thoughts using techniques like cognitive behaviour therapy.
During moments of overthinking, one can break the thought cycle by taking the attention away from the head into the body through simple movements such as going for a walk, or by bringing attention to our breathing pattern as well as other mindfulness practices. Journalling often helps people pen down their thoughts and transfer them from the mind to the paper as a way of releasing them. If overthinking is a trauma response, it would require deeper healing which can be done through therapy.
Q: What can people do to improve their mental well-being?
A: We are all holistic beings, where one aspect of our life or well-being affects the others. To improve our mental health, we need to take care of our physical well-being such as having healthy daily habits and routines in the form of nutrition, sleep, and exercises/movement.
Next, it is important to invest in some mental and emotional well-being practices like mindfulness, journaling, practising gratitude, therapy, learning to regulate our emotions and manage stress in a healthy way, spending time with loved ones as well as making space to do things that we enjoy and also to slow down once in a while.
Lastly, I think it is crucial to build personal resourcefulness such as having a support system, reaching out for help when needed, and knowing that mental well-being is as important as physical well-being and the stigma around it is unwarranted.
