“I think I have learnt more about mental health through films and theatre than through my professors,” said theatre person and psychiatrist Mohan Agashe as he spoke on the topic ‘Role of movies in teaching mental health’ at NIMHANS Convention Centre recently.
The session was part of a two-day conference organised by National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, India in collaboration with Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK.
While Agashe allowed that films might not suffice for learning about mental health, he believed that they are conducive to it.
“There are two elements to learning - intellect and interest. Even if someone is not intellectually very strong, they can learn if they’re interested enough. Films stimulate interest,” explained the actor.
He said that there’s too much emphasis on writing and literacy in our education system as well. “There’s the division of curricular subjects and extracurricular activities. And the extracurricular part has helped me far more than the curricular. I would not be speaking here just in the capacity of a professor,” he said, to guffaws from his audience.
Switching back to films, he added: “While there have been films that have misrepresented mental illnesses, others like Taare Zameen Par and A Beautiful Mind have done more than any psychiatrist could have.”
Relating his experience as a professional in the field of mental health, Agashe said that prior to the release of TZP, when he and his colleagues approached schools saying that they wanted to educate teachers on dyslexia and other learning disabilities, principals were quick to respond with ‘Oh, we don’t have such children here’. “But six months after the release of the movie, we had school principals approaching us. It was the same for ‘A Beautiful Mind’,” he recalled.
“It’s not just about mental health problems that films inform you about, they can educate caregivers too,” he said. To illustrate this, Agashe wrapped up the session with screening clips from the 2004 Marathi film ‘Devrai’ that talks of a man diagnosed with schizophrenia and another film ‘Bipolar’ that was screened last week at the short film festival The Way We Live in Goethe Institut, Bangalore.