Getting help shouldn’t be taboo

On the eve of a weekend, I received a call from an unknown number, and very unlike me, I answered. There was someone on the other side asking if I was a psychologist and upon confirming that I am one, she said that she needed immediate help. She started wailing over the phone and said that she is very upset because her marriage is on the brink of falling apart. There had been disputes with her spouse for almost a year and she said she was emotionally broken, depressed and had trouble sleeping, couldn’t focus at work and was worried about the child she was pregnant with.

The next morning, I had a flight to Singapore due to which I couldn’t secure her an appointment for the whole next week. My question to her is, which I obviously wouldn’t ask her, where was she before? Why did she not seek help in the previous year? And generally speaking why would people wait for their worst condition to occur before a consulting? My point is when people visit doctors for small viruses, why do they delay when suffering from neurotic mental illnesses such as OCD, anxiety or depression? It is critical to spread awareness that psychologists are not for the insane. Even a normal person can consult a psychologist for day-to-day stresses and conflicts without carrying the unnecessary stigma.

I regularly come across people who would want me to make them mentally fit in no time. It needs to be understood that a psychologist isn’t a magician. If you break your leg, the healing process would take time — at least three weeks in plaster and four weeks otherwise. So how is it possible to make emotionally deteriorated people (steeped in negative situations for long periods of time) optimally functioning within no time? To get surgical operations, there is a special room for treatment; similarly there is a complete setup for conducting counselling and therapeutic sessions. Our work is thorough and consistent — we, like any other professional, cannot affect change with a magic wand in a single moment.

A person can spend thousands on buying clothes, getting facials from beauty parlours and eating exuberant lunches in restaurants but when it is a question of going to a psychologist, people demonstrate reservations. Unfortunately, people have stopped looking after their mind, which is in fact the true source of power and beauty.

We live in a culture where we are just concerned with what is apparent and explicit. If a person is mentally upset, research has shown that the person will be physically sick too. All neurotic illnesses (anxiety, stress, depression, emotional breakdown, etc.) and day-to-day setbacks have a direct effect on our physiology. People can see our clothes and faces so we spend endlessly on them. People cannot see our minds, so we tend to delay consulting a psychologist until we are emotionally broken and then many a time, it is too late. This is when people stop believing in psychologists.

From not paying, to wanting to be treated immediately where we are seated, to avoiding seeking help till we break down and then expecting to be super fit right there and wanting all the problems to evaporate within no time is like “hing lagay na phatkari, rung vi chokha cherhay” (to have a gain without much effort). Delays in consulting a psychologist — when you need one — will only make you mentally severed.

There is another mental block where people think that medicine cannot help — it is for your doctor to decide so it’s time we break taboos regarding mental troubles. What patients don’t understand is that people build resistance to drugs and medications if they abuse them — and a time comes when they have to increase the quantity of the medicine because the same dosage won’t be as effective next time. This is how dependency and addictions develop.

My advice to people — don’t wait until the last hour to seek help. Getting counselling and therapeutic sessions in time is the key to optimal health.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2016.

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