The Kardashians are quaking in their impossibly high stilettoes. Kate Middleton’s recent confessions may merit a reality show of her own. The mother of two hinted at post-partum depression, saying that motherhood “is lonely at times, and you do feel quite isolated”.
With VIPs ready to dish the dirt on their downtime, depression is trending right now. Everyone’s blue about something or the other. People are comparing shrinks like they do iPhones. And for every single case of clinical melancholy are a hundred me-me-me types hawking their runny nose as neurosis.
This is the age of TMI—too much info. No one wants to fly over the cuckoo’s nest anymore; in it is where it’s at.
Once upon a time ailments were considered the reserve of the old or the hypochondriac. Hearts, bladders, knees and hips bore the brunt of hyperbole. But now that it is all about the mind, everything’s a blur when it comes to moaning. An average conversation throws up a ‘bipolar’ driver who overtook your car, a ‘schizo’ bank clerk who did not meet your eye, and some ‘totally mental’ side characters whose combined lunacy only serves to highlight your own IQ.
People are medically miserable because they are shy, asocial or body-shamed. Due to fizzy drinks, too much gluten, not enough green tea. When Taare Zameen Par was soaking up all its applause, mental health workers wondered how so many different conditions were mixed up so haphazardly in the film. And then Deepika Padukone got all chatty about her lows, leading fans to think they only had to get depressed to be a tall, lissom superstar.
How time has flown! When a pregnant Princess Diana, full of woes, hurled herself down the stairs during her first trimester, tongues were clicked. Now that her sons and daughter-in-law are opening up about their depressions, viewer response is more about their accents than any inner pain. Kate’s accent was called too posh, extra posh and fake posh. More than what she said, it was how she said. Kate’s English went under the microscope; too much Received Pronunciation it would seem. As for Harry, he was criticised for his slang, for his ‘ain’t’.
We have come a long way from chaining the elderly in attics. The ‘paagal’ is not the comic character in movies that he used to be. Attempted suicide is no longer a crime in India, thanks to the Mental Healthcare Bill passed in the Lok Sabha earlier this year. The women who grinned insanely while changing diapers have disappeared from TV ads. No Romeo dares dismiss his girlfriend’s angst as daddy issues, since he himself is having mommy issues. Even crazy and ditzy are no longer cute, as Sonakshi Sinha proves in Noor.
As we slowly learn our uppers from our downers, let’s bar ‘autistic’ from being the new ‘retard’ in cuss words. Stop declaring “I have OCD” to describe trivial repeats. Not everyone we meet is a psycho or has a split personality. Dementia or manic episodes are seldom self-diagnosed. Continue, of course, to have anxiety or panic attacks, and be mentally disturbed over this or that. But promise to ‘spaz out’ only when strictly necessary.