“Mental Health is not a destination but a process. It’s
about how you drive, not where you’re going”
After one and half year
of working with adolescents from various communities and government school on
gender, sexuality and reproductive health in New Delhi, we realized that it’s also
very important and crucial to have conversations on Mental Health. Why? Because
during adolescence, they are undergoing physical, psychological, emotional and
social changes- there are lot of curiosity and questions around them along with
the pressures of peers, parents and society for example- the constant
expectation of excelling in the exams, having the perfect body, being popular in
class, having many friends etc.
In the next activity,
the participants were divided into 4 groups, where in two groups were invited
to do mapping around “Mental Health” and the rest two were asked to do mapping
around “What does ‘accha lagna’ means to them”. Few of the insights are as
follows-
Mental Health-
“When I cry, I feel
relieved”
“In distress, I feel
angry”
“Fighting with someone”
“Making friends makes
me happy”
“I like to spend time
with my parents.”
“I like spending time
with friends, watching T.V to feel happy.”
“Having no friends
makes me feel sad.”
“To able to
share my worries with someone”
“To be able to share
everything friends”
“To sleep
well”
“To not
feel worried about exams”
“Not think
too much about various things”
“To sing”
“To stay
happy”
“When I
have conflicts with my friends; I feel sad and feel lonely”
"Pagal"
“All
situations of distress, tension or panic”
“When I'm
about to make a new friend; I feel very anxious”
“When I
fail in an exam; I feel distressed worrying about being beaten”
“When
people say bad things about me then I feel very angry”
“When I
don't get something which I really wanted; I start hating that thing”
“When I get
angry; I just sleep off”
Accha
lagna-
“I really
want to be happy as I have been sad”
“When I see
my best friend; I feel good”
“When
someone greets me; I feel happy”
“When I get
good results after working hard”
“When our
principal took us for local tour”
“When I'm
able to share with someone; I feel happy”
“When I'm
happy i feel like dancing!”
“When someone
says something good about me; I feel happy”
“When a
girl talks to me; I feel happy”
“When I do
a lot of fun when I'm happy”
“When I get
good marks; I feel very happy”
“When we get to go on school trips”
“When I win
a match”
“When a
girl talks to me”
“When I get
10-15 minutes extra to write during exams”
“When
teacher praises me in front of 40 children in class”
“When I'm
happy I listen to Punjabi songs”
“When
parents don't scold even if I get low marks”
“I feel
very happy when I'm able to take my revenge”
It was interesting for
me to be sitting with the participants and getting to know what mental health
means to adolescents, what makes them happy, sad, angry, and stressed and what
do they feel and act when they go through various emotions! It was crucial also
because there is also lot of confusion between Mental Health and Mental
illness, where they are two very different things.
Once all the groups
shared their mind maps in the larger circle, we engaged on what well-being,
mental health, mental illness means and how important is to have mental well-being?
The next part of the
session involved screening of the video where Sehar Raza shares her journey of
experiencing depression at the age of 16 and fighting it out through the
support of therapeutic intervention and parental support.
Since it was also crucial
to know what situations are stressful for the participants and what coping
mechanism they generally employ to deal with them- we gave them structured
sheets with the different columns and invited them to fill it individually.
Some of the common situations involved- getting low marks in subjects
like Maths, science or English; being scolded by parents or teachers in front
of others; when somebody makes fun of them or doesn’t listen to them, exam
anxiety, fighting with friends.
Some of their coping
mechanism involved- speaking to father, or best friends, listening to
music, playing, leaving the place, not talking to anyone, hitting punching
back, just shutting down etc.
It was interesting
session where we spoke about nitty gritty of mental health, various stressful
situations and overcoming mechanism, it was time to talk about myths and taboos
around mental health- lot of terms came out which we hear in our day to day
life, seemed more like ignorance and judgments namely- being mad, stupid, lost
mind, aggressive etc.
Now, comes the fun part
of the session, where in we shared a video on how can we deal with various day
to day pressures and stress and do the same there itself which resulted in the
oceans of laughter, the whole room had vibrant and amazing positive energy. All
we could see were the big smiles on each face! What an amazing and happiness
filled session it was :-)
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