Bengaluru has potential to become a torchbearer for mental health services’

In a few years, Bengaluru is projected to be the third fastest growing city in the world.

BENGALURU: In a few years, Bengaluru is projected to be the third fastest growing city in the world. Over the years, we have seen this city become the IT hub of the country, with millions of youngsters migrating here for job opportunities. With this sort of rapid urbanisation comes a competitive, high-stress lifestyle that values productivity and success above all else.

This sort of environment could take a toll on a person’s mental health, but it is often unrecognised, with people suffering alone because of the stigma attached to it. In the last decade, we have seen a terrifying rise in the instances of depression, anxiety, and other mental health concerns consequently leading to an increase in cases of burn out, low-performance/absenteeism at work, or even suicide.

The need of the hour is to spread awareness and increase mental health outreach at the community and the organisation levels so that we can create mind-positive work and living spaces that will foster healthy minds.

The first step towards this is to combat the deep-rooted stigma around mental health, through extensive awareness drives. People need to truly understand that having a mental health concern does not mean the end of the career or that one is inferior for having to face it. We also need to work on improving our mental healthcare infrastructure so that we can provide easily accessible, affordable, ethical, multi-disciplinary, evidence-based mental healthcare services. There is a dire need for more mental health care professionals – psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, caregivers, and other allied personnel, as well as for more mental healthcare centres, both in urban and rural areas.  

All of this can only be achieved when government and non-government entities, corporates and academic entities, as well as the community at large, work together. Bengaluru has world-class institutes to further understanding and treat mental health, some of the best technological minds in the world, as well a robust entrepreneurial culture. These are the perfect ingredients to foster creative solutions that can be affordable and accessible solutions to a lot of the problems we are facing today. Bengaluru has all the potential to become a torchbearer for mental health services in the country, and even among the developing nations of the world.  

SOLUTION: We can work towards eliminating stigma, creating mental health awareness down to the grass-root levels, as well as putting in place initiatives to address the treatment gap.  Given how dire the situation is right now, it can seem to be too herculean a task, but we will be working tirelessly to realise this vision.  

Let your mixed feelings about Bengaluru get stirred up, as an influential person talks about things nice and nasty about the city in this weekly column

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