by Dr Amit Chakraborty -

World Mental Health Day 2023

Dr Subhamita Moitra, a researcher in the field of Neuro Psychology has observed:

While the entire world observes Mental health day on 10th October, there are dark corners in every segment of the world where people are suffering from mental health issues!
In this twenty first century, when messages are sent faster than feelings are evoked, “mental health” is still differentiated from “health”, it still doesn’t come under the coverage of health itself. Definitely, the developed countries have managed to provide a better mental health support infrastructure and have appreciably established mass mental health awareness. But the developing countries are still struggling!
Apart from the socio economic crisis, there are many other challenges which somehow subside the need of mental health to be recognized as one of the top priorities in developing countries. Neither the level of awareness nor the policies are adequate. Though the Mental health act was revised and reformed in 2017 in India, there is still a paucity of appropriate policy and insurances for providing optimum health care in case of mental health. Even most of us don’t know about our rights as citizens of the country when it comes to mental health issues. We don’t speak out because we feel ashamed or hesitant to say that “I have mental issues”, as a result of which, the crisis remains unattended leading to a sharp increase in number of OPD visits, hospitalization and other mishaps across cross all ages and socio economic strata worldwide (including India). Therefore it’s high time to talk about our feelings, our sorrows, our challenges.
But it’s not easy to talk about ourselves. Since childhood, we learn to take care of others but not ours! We seek happiness in others but we never ask ourselves “am I happy”. Of course, it doesn’t mean that we must not think for others. But it means that we should take care of others as well as ours. On this World mental health day, let us plan to build together some small scale support systems where our near and dear ones can seek help. This system doesn’t need a medical or occupational expert, it can simply be a group of people who can be silent listeners, to whom people can express themselves without the fear of being judged. The assurance of not being judged and all personal information being protected can make a person feel safe to express grief, anxiety, dark desires and many more. Can we do it…?

Happy World Mental Health Day to one and all

#WorldMentalHealthDay2023 #WorldHealthOrganizationWHO #mentalhealthsupport #mentalhealthindia #MentalHealthMonth #wellness #wellbeing #creativity_and_wellness_with_subhamita

by Dr Amit Chakraborty -

Art Therapy: an Appeal to Mental Health Professionals

In my personal capacity, I shall hardly be able to give a comprehensive report of ART-THERAPY in India. As far as I know , at least in urban sector, under the umbrella of institutions, universities, art-schools & psychology departments Visual art is not yet considered as a tool for therapy for mental distress. It may be mentioned here that Music –therapy or Dance-therapy are relatively more acceptable and practiced in some institutions.
On the other hand, we truly have no dearth of resource persons necessary for conducting Art-therapy . We have huge number of trained artists , psychologists, psychiatrists & psychotherapists . We have rich vocabulary of folk-art. We also find a good number of social-workers, who use art-materials and art-activity with the purpose of SOCIAL-THERAPY, specially for underprivileged and mentally challenged children.
At the same time, we know that the use and practice of Art- therapy has increased exponentially all over the world. I personally believe that our country which is basically multi-linguistic, Visual language has a special scope for communication in expression of inner self.
So I believe that there is a wide need to spread the concept and facilities of Art-therapy befitting our socio-cultural context. We have been running an Art-therapy clinic at a NGO , DANA (www.danakolkata.org ), Kolkata, for last four years. Our team of psychologist, artist and psychiatrist have been working with adult psychiatrist patients.
We also organize annual conference to review our works and to interact with experts of related disciplines. Broadly we like to focus our discourses on (1) Creativity and creative process and ( 2 ) Visual Language as a form of non-verbal communication.
Next year we like to hold our annual-meet sometime in the month of March 2016. We have been heartily trying to reach to all the like-mind professionals. Please feel free to communicate your views and enrich our vision.
DR. DEBASIS BHATTACHARYA
( www.drdebasis.com )