Much needed mental vitamins 🖤

 

Hello readers!

Recently some things gave me chills, things I never thought would happen to someone around me or someone so close to me as my brother. Let me put it this way, we had to pick up my brother from his school 2 hours earlier than his regular school time for around 3 days in a row. The reason as told by his principal was that he misses his mother (he is 12 yrs old). Funny right ? the first day when he came home given this reason it was funny for us as well. But later when we had to pick him up early for three consecutive days...it wasn't funny.

He did unusual things like waking up at the midnight and completing his incomplete notebooks or crying about not having friends (because he was a new student), which was strange for us, because he never really cared about finding friends and completing his incomplete notebooks before. On one not very fine day we got a call from the school again asking to pick him up once again because he misses his mother and just wanted to attend his favorite teacher's class. They informed us that his favorite teacher has been taking him to all the classes along with her. They also informed us that the principal who is also a child psychologist had a talk with him and wants to talk to my mother regarding it. Upon reaching there the principal said that Girish is suffering from childhood depression. I had observed his weird behavior these days. But never thought it was this. He was just writing every time I saw him..and cried to me saying that the teachers refused to explain the topics that he missed when he was ill. This was STRANGE, knowing that he is not this kind of person. Before I not just thought but believed that depression was just another western concept made up by Europe's dumbheads. Like a very old grandma would say that these are just pretenses, I was of that kind. But having observed it so close, I think it's something that should be taken care of.

My brother just wanted to stay around Mumma because he felt only she understands him. And when he went to school he would simply refuse to attend any other class except for his favorite teacher's. The principal explained that this was because he hasn't made any friends yet and you people should not force him to study (which nobody did) and let him take holidays for some days.

At midnight when he used to wake me up, asking me to explain his lessons ....telling me that the teachers are just behind in completing the syllabus (bizarre as our education system is) it wasn't a surprise for me. Because learning magnetism without actually touching a magnet might be sarcastic to outsiders but it is the reality of some countries like ours. But the whole thing cannot be completely blamed upon the education system in India or the lack of sense of reality in the coming generations. Both these reasons are equally responsible for putting children's mental health at stake. We cannot do anything about the education system (on an individual level) but we can try and bring ourselves and other 21st-century children into reality. After attending free webinars by Erika's Lighthouse (US based) and an Indian NGO I got to know that learning environment is essential but a positive learning environment is a necessity and about the way in which schools should actually function.

Research credit- Erika's Lighthouse

 

Many parents question that why problems of this kind did not exist when they were young, they need to contemplate and consider the fact that there were a lot of other things which did not exist in their times which can probably be the agency of all these problems. Here in India people believe that spirituality is the medicine to mental health problems, I do comply with this statement but I rarely get to see the spiritual side of people of my age around me. I can see the cure vanishing. Mental health problems like depression might be less intrusive to some people. But it is extremely heavy to the people with serious intellectual disabilities (i.e learning disabilities like dyslexia ,disgraphia) which can never be cured.

 Getting depression out of the dark is necessary. 

Let us change our mindset first ,and stop viewing proper mental health as a pretentious and a lavish term. And start with understanding what people around us are going through.

I hope this is helpful ! 

Thank you for reading !

Your opinions are welcomed below.😊