Mumbai: It was an endeavour to spread awareness on various mental health issues and its implications; in this regard a mental health campaign was conducted which witnessed a gathering of around 150 psychiatrists under one roof.
As there is a dearth of information in the rural areas pertaining to mental health issues, it becomes a challenging task to tackle various prevailing misconceptions.
However, the psychiatrists were well prepared for this scenario and they covered enough ground to ensure that they could reach out to the maximum number of people in a short period of time.
On this occasion, the senior doctors stated that with each passing day, the spates of mental health issues are rising in the country. However, now with better awareness, more people are coming forward and speaking about the state of their mental health.
“More and more people are opening about depression and we read about cases of suicide in newspapers caused due to peer pressure or harassment,” said doctors.
But what about rural areas, do they have enough awareness about these issues? The topic of mental health has not easily penetrated at the grassroots level in our villages.
It was indeed a commendable effort that various psychiatrists had gone from door to door to the people’s houses to educate them about mental health conditions and make them aware about the importance of being in tune with the mind.
A campaign has been launched to address the mental health conditions across the state. On June 1 and 2, various psychiatrists from all over Maharashtra had gathered to impart mental health education to the people.
This exercise involved Mental health experts, who created awareness in 22 districts in Maharashtra within a short span of just two days. The interactions between the people and the doctors covered a wide range of topics related to mental health.
The first phase was conducted on April 7 to spread awareness about depression. The second phase organized on June 1 and 2, was to raise awareness related to ‘Schizophrenia – a mental health disease.’ The name of this campaign was ‘Gaon tithe Mansopchar.’
Dr. Amol Deshmukh, a Psychiatrist from Aurangabad, addressed everyone and stated that people living in the rural areas have a lot of misconceptions related to mental illness as they are not even aware about this kind of disease.
As a result, a lot of people are not being administered proper medical treatment. In metro cities like Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur, a number of psychiatrists are available to help the people in distress. But, in rural areas, there is a shortage of mental health experts.
“Compared to the urban areas, rural areas have lesser number of psychiatrists. Our aim is that every individual should have access to mental health treatment. Hence, we have launched this campaign to reach out to each and every village,” said Dr. Deshmukh.
The campaign was launched on April 7 in order to spread awareness about depression with an aim to reach out to each and every person across the state.
“We successfully implemented the pilot project across the 22 districts which had 50 psychiatrists participating in this campaign. Now, more 150 mental health experts have joined this campaign. We have managed to reach out to each and every household in the 22 districts,” concluded Dr. Deshmukh.
Dr. Milan Balakrishnan, a Mumbai-based psychiatrist stated that the mental health awareness campaign was launched by the doctors themselves. They all came together as it is their duty to serve the people and the society at large.
“As a part of the campaign, we stressed upon the use of social media, one on one interaction, and group sessions to create awareness of the mental health conditions,” he said.
