YourDOST: a tech review

Being a student in the field of psychology for the past 14 years, it's amazing to see a tide of change sweeping across India in people's response to mental illness as a whole. The review of the mental health care bill in the year 2013 was a welcoming change (it took 20 odd years for a change...hmmm...not impressed), but to be politically correct , a big "Shabash" to our fellow brothers at the Govt. Big bro from the west too went in for a makeover, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) restructured the psyche's bible "DSM IV" , which got an whopping upgrade to "DSM V", mashallah!! And hey who can forget our darling Deepika Padukone who spoke about her battle against depression! Let's all say cheers to her as well. From the govt., to the medical fraternity and the mass media , a huge domino effect has spilled on mental health, which is noteworthy. Mental health is now being viewed as a serious illness just like any other physiological one. 

It feels amazing to stand and watch the ripple effect but, hey something interesting caught my eye recently. I happened to stumble across an innovative start-up titled "YourDost". YourDost is an organisation which holds its presence online and specifically caters to helping anyone who requires anonymous counselling assistance from a splendid platform of over 200 trained and certified mental health experts. To address issues of discover-ability and comfort of talking to an expert, YourDost has built a platform (their website yourdost.com , and also mobile app, android app YourDost and apple app YourDost) where anyone can seek assistance for free. In a nutshell YourDost aims at reducing the stigma attached to seeking help for mental wellness in our country through their impeccable services. With the click of a button or a silent tap on your phone you can get help for yourself or a loved one from YourDost, now such an initiative calls for a standing ovation!!!

Disclaimer: I am not paid to endorse anyone or any institution in my blog :)

A lending hand

Dear Readers,

I am back to blogging after a long hiatus. Today would be a great way to kick start my blog again as it happens to be Mental Health Month blog Day and this month is also the Mental Health Awareness Month.

                                                   Image taken from here

I heard true life story which touched my heart. I want to share it with you as well. Here it goes. In the town of Thiruvella, which is in Kerala , India, lived a wealthy aristocratic family. This family had loving parents blessed with two pretty daughters, Sandhya and Latha. These little girls had a poor maid named Mariamma who helped their Mother with the daily chores. All was well, years rolled by, parents grew older and so did the Mariamma. She never got married for her own personal reasons, she lived with the family despite having a small house of her own. Sandhya and Latha blossomed to beautiful young ladies who where busy with their studies in college in Mumbai.

During the month of July, one rainy night the phone rang and Mariamma answered it. It was a call from Sandhya's hostel warden. Sandhya was ill and she was hospitalised. Mariamma panicked and rushed to tell Sandhya's parents. The parents took the next flight to Mumbai, leaving Mariamma behind to take care of their house. On reaching Mumbai, the parents was received by a highly disturbed Latha. Latha drove them to a mental health care centre. On seeing the board of the centre, the parents were quite shocked as to why they were being brought there, they expected to go to a regular hospital to meet their elder daughter. Latha requested her parents to meet the doctor first before meeting Sandhya. They met the head psychiatrist Dr. Prahlad who was in charge of Sandhya. He told them that their daughter has been diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia. On hearing this the mother fainted and the father stormed out of the doctor's room and took the next flight back to Kerala. On regaining consciousness the mother went to meet Sandhya. She was devastated to see Sandhya's condition. Sandhya wouldnt talk to her and refuse to move from her bed. She looked dazed. The mother wanted to take her back to Kerala but Dr. Prahlad suggested the Sandhya be under observation and medication for some time. The mother stayed with Sandhya at the centre for a while.

After a few weeks the father asked the mother and Latha to come back to Kerala. She went back to Kerala with a heavy heart. On reaching home she realised that her younger daughter, Latha's marriage has been fixed without her consent or her knowledge. Latha was upset, she refused food and water for a few days. Her father cajoled her into consenting to the marriage alliance as it would be difficult for her to get a good alliance if the society came to know about the mental ailment of her elder sister. Within the next ten days Latha got married. The mother was upset with the forced marriage of the younger daughter and the poor health of the older one. The father refused to let the mother to go back to Mumbai after the marriage. He told her to forget that they ever had an older daughter. He said he was ashamed to have a mentally ill child. He told his relatives and friends that Sandhya had died in a car accident has he cremated her in Mumbai. He burnt all the old photos of Sandhya. He wrote a will leaving all his assests only for Latha. The old maid, Mariamma silently witnessed all this drama. One fine day she quit her job and took a train to Mumbai to meet Sandhya. Dr Prahlad permitted Sandhya discharge as she had not shown any improvement and all her medicals bills had not been paid for over a month. He sponsored Sandhya's and Mariamma trip back to Kerala. For the next two years Mariamma did various odd jobs to take care of Sandhya's medical bills, food and clothing. The two of them lived in Mariamma's one bedroom hut. She was getting weak from old age and doing multiple jobs was taking a toll on her health.

Out of the blue the word had spread around about Mariamma's generous heart and an NGO intervened to take care of Sandhya and Mariamma. Mariamma did not want charity, so the head of the NGO negotiated with her pay her in exchange of services rendered. Mariamma now gets a decent salary to take care of her self and Sandhya and the job she chose to do was to make food for physically challenged children.

As for Sandhya' health, she is much better, she has joined the NGO which sheltered her due to the absence of support groups in her town. But she is still on medication. Her father still refuses to acknowledge her presence on this planet. Her mother and sister do not make any attempt to contact her fearing being ostracized from their community.

Its a shame that despite being educated people Sandhya's family has chosen to abandon her due to her mental ailment. In a dark world where we live in going about our daily lives there are heaven sent angels like Mariamma who choose to help despite not being related by blood and overcoming hurdles of social stigma.

Image taken from here

Disclaimer: All names has been changed to protect privacy. Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental.


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Anima- Animus Indian view- Ardhanarishvara

What am I? Male or Female? Masculine or Feminine? Either of the two? or two in one? Gender stereotypes has been subjected to hair splitting speculation for quite a while, till Carl Jung threw light on this concept from the unconscious perspective and christened it Anima- Animus. thanks to him, he made it human understandable. A quick preview is available on wikipedia for those who find this new, click here.

Moving to the eastern view of the unconscious, a lot of importance on the same has been emphasized. To the question "What am I? The scripture replies "Tat tvamasi" it means " You are that". Throwing another question "You are that? ....what does the THAT signify?", the scriptures replies "Aham Brahmasmi" it means "You are part of the Universe". Throwing in the last question "Which part of the Universe", the scriptures replies " Antaryami" it means " the super soul within you aka the God which resides within you". The quintessential seeker bluntly wonders " The God within me? Is God a thing or a concept? Is God a "He" or a "She"? If God is within me, am I God? How can I be God? Is God working through me?"


God can create, preserve and destroy, history has stood the test of time to prove to us that we too can do the same, or rather we are doing the same. Diving into the deep waters of ones mighty unconscious, scriptures quote that the self is a beautiful subtle union of masculine and feminine qualities. This has been explained in detail through the Hindu concept of Anima- Animus which is called Ardhanarishvara in sanskrit. Ardhanarishvara is the cosmic representation of the divine parents, where in Lord Shiva is the father and Goddess Parvati is the mother. Lord Shiva occupying the right signifies the male principle, the passive force (Purusha) and Goddess Parvati on the left signifies the female principle, the active force (Prakruthi), both are inseparable, interdependent and attracted to each other. The left side is associated with feminine characteristics like intuition, and creativity where as the right side is associated with masculine characteristics like logic, valor and systematic thought. If God is residing in us, then one has to adhere to both the gender roles in one's lifetime. Natures way of reminding us is the presence of both the male and female hormones (testosterone and estrogen) in all of us.


Humans would have had to adhere to societal norms on the segregation of duties to both the sexes in the past. Shifting focus to current times, one can easily view people breaking rigid tradition where in both men and women have openly sharing or swapping gender roles. Modern fathers take interest and play an active role in raising children which was predominantly a mother's role. Women too have broken the shackles of being associated to only the kitchen to climbing corporate ladders and playing an equal and important role of the family's bread winner. To the conventional thinkers who ridicule the gender role shift, too bad this is here to stay!!


Has mankind spiritually evolved to accepting universal oneness and abandoning segregation just like Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati?Is this shift a divine evolution of mankind or a forced societal norm is yet to be ascertained?

Mark of Cain?

Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful lady named Nandana. She lived in Bangalore ( a city in India). She belonged to a conservative Hindu family. She got married to a man named Surya when at the age of twenty. As any young bride she looked forward to a peaceful and happy married life.

                                        Image taken from here

Poor Nandana, little did she know what life had in store for her. Her married life was miserable. Surya  was coerced into marrying her by his parents. He started venting all his frustration on her by physically abusing her. As a typical Indian Hindu girl she could not go back to her parents as her husband's house was considered to be her home. The marriage never consummated. Her in laws did not spare her either. Post one year of marriage they started mentally harassing her to produce a male heir. She was always laughed at and snubbed in social gatherings. She was not given consent to meet her parents, siblings or friends. This continued for fourteen years. Years of torture mentally and physically had taken a toll on Nandana's mental health.

Image taken from here

 She started speaking to invisible people. She would laugh loudly in the spur of a moment. She would dance and sing with imaginary friends. She started showing symptoms of' "Schizophrenia". She was taken to the old family doctor. He claimed that she could be having a psychological issue. He suggested that she be taken to a mental health care center where the issue could be diagnosed and treated effectively. Sadly neither Surya nor his parents took Nandana to a mental health care professional, as they were paranoid of how the society would view them. For them it was a major taboo to have a mental ailment and to seek help to tackle the issue was out of the question. A year passed by, there was no improvement in Nandana's health. Surya's relatives started raising questions as to why he did not have a child post fourteen years of marriage. A crazy relative suggested that if the couple would adopt a child, Nandana's mental illness would go away! Surya and his parents went to an orphanage and adopted a baby girl.

                                              Image taken from here

 Nandana was happy to see the baby. But in her disturbed mental phases she could not take care of the baby appropriately. In the beginning her in laws took care of the child but in a month's time they got fed up. Another crazy relative suggested that Surya, Nandana and the baby should live alone in another house. Surya's parents convinced Surya to move in an apartment with his wife and child. Surya adored the little munchkin. At times Nandana would also sing lullaby's to the baby. On an unfortunate rainy evening, Surya, his wife and child was enjoying the smell of the wet soil and the burst of fresh air in the balcony. Surya's mobile rang and he went inside to take the call. In the spur of the moment Nandana sat on the railings of the balcony with the child facing outward and she sang " Hush a bye baby on the tree top, when the wind blows the cradle will rock, and when the bow breaks the cradle will fall and down will come baby, cradle and all....." The unimaginable happened, Nandana dropped the child from the tenth floor. Nandana did not realize that she had dropped the child. When Surya returned to the balcony, he saw Nandana sitting on the railing and she did not have the child. Surya screamed at Nandana, and in the sudden shock she lost her balance and fell.

                                             Image taken from here
                                             
Two days later at the funeral of Nandana and her child Surya's relatives were having hair splitting speculations of what might have happened, some claimed Nandana was possessed, some said she was under the influence of an unfavorable planet as per astrology, some proclaimed that she was cursed and some silently whispered that Surya would have pushed them both to get her property and assets.The old family doctor came for the funeral and saw and heard all what the people had to say. He  looked at the bodies of Nandana and the baby and silently thought "only if Nandana was given the right treatment, she would have been alive today". He shed a tear...

                                           Image taken from here

Note : Mental health illness is just like any other illness. It would be utter foolishness not to seek appropriate interventions to heal the ailment. Mental health has stood the test of time, medications and therapies have been formulated over the years to help mankind. To all those who are reading this, take a heart to help a mentally ill person, he or she did not bring this illness upon themselves on purpose. Its a pity in today's world despite the rise in mental health care centers, hospitals and clinics, people seem to sympathize only with those who have physiological issues. Kindly note, the mentally ill are not branded with the Mark of Cain.

Disclaimer : All names appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblances to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

                                                       

Maryada purushottam Lord Ram

To whoever is reading this blog... Greetings! This is my first attempt to jump in to the world of blogging. I have been thinking about this for more than three years, I honestly cannot believe that I am blogging!!!! Yipeeee....OMG.

I dedicate my first blog to Lord Ram whose stories had left me spellbound as a child.....however thanks to a BA (hons) in Psychology, Msc in Psychology and currently a Research scholar in Psychology has left me thinking can there really be a Maryada Purushottam in today's world? For those who did not quite understand the term  "Maryada purushottam" aka finest specimen of a disciplined human being. Only Lord Ram was given this title in the Indian Scriptures.

If I met Lord Ram (in some avatar), I have always been curious as to which psychometric assessment tool would befit this Vishnu Avatar.....would BIG5 suffice? or the never ending 16PF?......if he is on planet earth would he have time to answer the questionnaires given by this hapless earthling.....or would he be too busy slaying crazy demons (there are sooooooooooo many of them these days!)

Did Lord Ram really deserve the title of " Maryada Purushottam?" Why in heavens name did he leave Ayodhya  just because his step mom Kaikeyi wanted her son to become King ? What would have been his IQ and EQ score then? Probably he would have tipped the scales of Conscientiousness on BIG5! 

The great warrior prince groomed under the great Sage Vishwamitra, couldn't scare Shoorpanakha away? For those who are not familiar with this character, she was Ravana's sister and she had a huge crush on Lord Rama....scriptures quotes that he was a handsome dude! Poor chic proposed him and he asked her to leave.....but she did not....probably Shoorpanaka had TYPE A personality trait! She refused to leave and started throwing tanturms!!! Lord Rama was in a fix. Loving baby bro Laxman comes to the rescue and chops Shoorpanaka's nose! Laxman would have definitely tipped the trait on "Dominance" in 16PF.

Those who are familiar with the Ramayan knows how Lord Ram when to great heights to rescue his beloved wife Sita. But he succumbed to societal pressure and doubted the sanctity of his pregnant wife?!!  Just because she was kidnapped he doubted the paternity of his unborn child? Poor Sita was banished from his kingdom, but Laxman secretly escorted her to the forest, so that she could be taken care of by Rishi Valmiki. How could a Maryada purushottam do that? 

On seeing his twin sons Luva and Kusha, Lord Ram realises that he was wrong. He begged for forgiveness from Sita. Scriptures quote that she went back to her Mother Bhoomi Devi. The erstwhile King, the great Lord Ram could not bare the pain of realising his mistake and commits suicide by jumping in to River Sarayu....which mood disorder was he suffering from in DSMIV?

Was Lord Rama really a Maryada Purushottam? Psychometric assessments  would answer otherwise. Or was he an extra ordinary human being who stood by "The Truth' at all times in his life and help mankind for years to come? Could he really be God who came on earth to teach mankind the virtues on being "RIGHT" and "JUST" and underwent painful sacrifices in the bargain?

As a person, Rama personifies the characteristics of an ideal person "purushottama" who is to be emulated. He had within him all the desirable virtues that any individual would seek to aspire, and he fulfilled all his moral obligations (maryada). Rama's purity and piety in his intentions and actions inspires affection and devotion for him from a variety of characters from different backgrounds. For example, he gave up his rightful claim to the throne, and agreed to go into exile for fourteen years, to fulfill the vow that his father had given to Kaikey. For such supreme sacrifices, and many other qualities, Rama is considered a maryada purushottamor the best of upholders of Dharma, a basically human but exemplary figure. Some of his ideals are as follows:

1. At the time when it was normal for kings to have more than one wife, Rama gave ideal of having a single wife. 2. Rama always followed his promise at any cost. In fact, he went to forest to make his father's promise to Kaikeyi true.

3. Excellent friend: Rama had very touching relations with his friends irrespective of their castes.

4. Even towards his enemies, Rama showed great nobility and virtue. When Ravana first fought with Rama, Rama defeated him to such an extent that Ravana lost his charioteer, horses, chariot, flag, weapons and armor. Though the situation was at his advantage, Rama instead praised Ravana for a great fight that day, and asked him to retire and take rest, as he must be quite tired. Ravana was greatly embarrassed at this, but he was also gratified that Rama saved his life, and this led him to consider for a moment whether to retreat and give Sita back!

Lord Rama is an epitome of humanity, it might be difficult to find a human with all his qualities, but if one carefully gaze we can find humans who work hard to help nature and mankind in the form of teachers, doctors, lawyers, bus drivers, law enforcement professionals, law abiding citizens, etc. Lord Rama would have left this planet years ago but his legacy still lives on in the hearts of humans who are truly human! They are around us but we fail to recognize them or we take them for granted, just like how Lord Ram was taken for granted by mankind.

Maryada Prushottam aap kahan ho? vapus kab awoge?

Pic courtsey :devdutt.com