Mental Wellness | Excerpts from TGV Inner Circle conversation on March 12 2022

How do you spend a weekend or Saturday evening? Party with friends?

What if we tell there are other ways to party? Yes, get into some insightful discussions, filled with fun, stories, and more. The TGV brings a new way of partying were like-minded, yet unique thought process folks join to discuss a topic. This time the topic of the session is one of the more stigmatized “Mental Wellness”. Tune into the minutes of this discussion to know more about this topic and the different views people have expressed. Very critical questions were posed by our host.

Part-1: Rohit Gupta opened the session and Deepika introduced our speaker of the session Ms. Jigyasa Tandon, who is a mental health educator, counselling psychologist on sensitive topics, poet, and much more.

Jigyasa shared lots of points to ponder upon with the group. Mental Wellness is a new buzzword in start-up & business; we can also anticipate more start-up ideas working on mental health in Shark Tank season 2. Why Mental health is such an important term and why do we need to discuss or talk about it?

After world war 1, the war left many of the people in a horrible state of insecurity, crisis. People realized that philosophy does not work, and people came up with psychology, psychiatry, and different branches of mental health. Our day-to-day activities were observed and studied, and it was concluded that small behaviors have a larger impact.

The three laws: How intelligence is sacred? How certain people are different, some are more intelligent, like Shakuntala Devi who was a human supercomputer.

2nd law is about how to treat and train people with mental illness.

3rd law is about mental positivity.

People started scientifically studying and classifying, classical conditioning, observational learnings, behavioural formation, but the most important study was not done till 2000. We spent most of the time achieving the best, judging people who are not successful be it in studies or career and we created a competitive world that kept pushing mental wellness to the back seat. We don’t discuss mental illness and there is still a stigma. AI is playing a role of support but human needs human, we need to focus on the big picture. Ignoring negative emotions which are attached to anger, fear, the sorrow we created a state of distress. India as a country scored high in Distressed category. We are running behind the labels which we get in social status. But we don’t really know what we are good at, what is our highest potential?

Mental illness in children needs to be focused on and taken care of at an early stage and complete awareness about it and acknowledging it. Let us encourage our children to express every emotion of theirs by not rejecting their ideas, creativity, not being judgemental every time. We as a human who has created a world of virtual connection still need human-to-human communication with compassion to understand anybody’s mental state or if they need help. We restrict ourselves to talk and express our emotions, speaking up about how we feel. It’s time for getting educated to know humans than machines. It’s high time we get educated about this and not stigmatized. Appreciate negative emotions and acknowledge but do not ignore them so that it does not get piled up and later causes a major problem. Mental illness needs to be dealt with at every stage of it and the sooner the better to take genuine help.

Rajshree said that each one of us in our life deals or faces mental illness like anxiety or depression in one or the other phase. Rajshree shared a very interesting story of her daughter who as a passion is a home baker and by profession is a dentist. But way back her daughter had shared her interest to become a chef which was not taken as an encouraging profession from the perspective of a parent.

Deepika shared an experience of her as a parent who couldn’t completely understand when her daughter who was in 6th grade and due to some issues could not express her difficulty in dealing with a bully and started losing interest in her potential and abilities. As compared to our generation we where we never talked about these issues but yes now, we have to start accepting and start dealing with these and make our children stronger to face any kind of situation without losing mental stability.

Vedashree shared her 20yrs back story very candidly when she was asked to go to the US with a condition to take Hepatitis-B vaccination, but it left her with weight gain issues which made her struggle with dealing with body aches. She was surprised to hear a word from her doctor known as “Stress”. And she started to find the solutions to it, finally, she started using EFT techniques (a Chinese remedial therapy) which worked wonderfully. She came to know that the root cause is the fatty liver due to the vaccination. She also mentioned about Bach flower remedy, which was discovered by a British homeopathy doctor how beautifully it works on people with fear, anxiety, mental disorder.

Part-2: Rohit, as a host posted another question to the participants “Define your mental health in one line”

Sangeeta shared a quote by Swami Vivekananda which she believes very strongly and practices daily “Talk to yourself at least once in a day. Otherwise, you may miss a meeting with an excellent person in this world.” She strongly believes in Indian ancient techniques which are designed by our sages and gurus to keep us healthy always and think beyond ourselves more about other living beings like animals, trees, soil, and water.

Anand shared a very important practice which he follows “take a deep breath”. Whenever we feel lost or confused this technique helps. He felt very relaxed for being part of this session on a weekend. He insisted that if we acknowledge the mental issue, half of the problem is solved instead of ignoring it. We should not take everything seriously, take things lightly.

Naveen stated that he believes in one mantra which is like if he is physically fit then he is mentally fit too and vice versa. He feels very good but never gets stressed out even if his plate is full. He insisted that never procrastinate so that the tasks never pile up and then leads to a situation of hasty decision. His advice is to always keep your plate empty not overloaded which will create stress.

Rajashree shared her views on how gratitude helps to keep oneself more balanced. One cannot be physically well and mentally ill, everything should be balanced. There has to be a balance between conscious and sub-conscious conditions.

Part-3: Rohit posted the last question of the session; Whether mental illness should be covered under medical insurance?

Anand mentioned that the insurance business is very dicey but there are organizations that are supporting their employees with programs to help them for mental wellness under the umbrella of “Employee Assistance Program” which is free of cost and everything is kept confidential and anonymous.

Prerana who is a lawyer by profession shared a very insightful perspective from legal terms. There is a concept “Doli incapax” is a Latin legal maxim that infers the meaning incapability of committing a crime. She mentioned her dissertation work and will share more details in the coming sessions. She mentioned a case where the husband has pleaded for divorce from his wife as she is mentally ill which is very rhetoric in approach for seeking justice. This shows that we are not supportive and create a discouraging environment for people with mental illness.

Part-4: A well-distinguished guest Mr. Prakash was introduced by Naveen

Prakash sir shared his insights on the human mind how it keeps chasing something. Our intention is to enjoy life, but we exceed our limits sometimes and affect others, our relatives, peers, family. But if we enjoy everything to our limits and are very much considerate everything will be balanced. If we have control of the body, then we hopefully should have and maintain a balance between our mental, emotional bodies too. Even the smallest issue like falling or an accident creates an imbalance. Anything more or out of the limit will cause imbalance whether it is physical, mental, or emotional, and create complete chaos. Wellness will happen only when you are considerate, illness will happen when you are not considerate. As the traditions are changing, society becoming paperless, moving towards the digital era, everything needs to be balanced. The mental balance will come from as we take care of character, behaviours, are conscious about every action we take, and become more civilized.

Altogether it was a great session led by Rohit Gupta.

Key or new words we heard:

1.??????EFT (Emotional freedom technique)

2.??????Bach flower remedy

3.??????Employee Assistance program

4.??????Doli incapax

Thanks to Sangeeta Doni for excellent write up! Special thanks to Sourish Ghosh for capturing initial notes.

Here is the unabridged version of the conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fatd6Scna4

If you are interested to be part of TGV Inner Circle conversations in future, please DM Naveen Samala