MENTAL HEALTH: DEMON OR
DISORDER
"One need not be a
chamber to be haunted; one need not be a house; the brain has corridors
surpassing material place." - Emily Dickinson
The father of modern philosophy-René Descartes proponed the theory
of duality, viz. mind and body are distinct and separable. Mental phenomenon,
in the world of Cartesian Dualism, is non-physical. Whether all of this is true
or not, it is a province of philosophy and its veracity is dependent on which
school of thought can craft a better argument on a given day. What we can
experience for sure, is the reality of mental health problems and its various
inter-related issues. Mind is not separated from the body; its problems are
intrinsically related to the physical body and vice-versa. All this is
beginning to be taken seriously only fairly recently. People have been battling
with depression and anxiety ever since the enigma of human brain produced the
magic called consciousness. This persistent mental evil has been called many
things, from the Greek Goddess Oyzis to Dysthymia (PDD). We have known the
existence of this demon from a long time ago; it is only now that we've begun
to unveil its terrifying face.
Mental illnesses come in all shapes and forms, its symptoms
dissimilar, its outcomes different and sometimes even contrasting. What we are
seeing now is a collective upsurge of awareness and consciousness-raising about
the phenomenon. Paintings like Uccello's 'The Battle of San Romano', 1438 to Altdorfer's
'The Battle of Alexander at Issus', 1529; artists have mostly illuminated the
glorious usurping and the revolutions. Art, in this case, has both imitated and
informed life. Evolution of society is always coupled with the evolution of
art, one not being exclusive to the other. Whether it's Kollwitz's 'War'
(Krieg), 1923 that brilliantly illustrates the harrowing sorrow of war; or
Picasso's 'Guernica', 1937, which is the epitome of chaos and struggle; or the
Tom Lea’s iconic painting 'The 2,000 Yard Stare' 1945 which internalizes the
horror of wars.
Slowly and steadily we began to assess the psychological misfortunes
of our species. The assessment, relatively primitive, has been done to the
point that the overwhelming knowledge of it is darker and more subversive than
the innocent but regressive ignorance of the whole phenomenon. Today, children
are growing up with the vocabulary consisting of up-to-date scientific
literature regarding mental health, or anything for that matter.
What has befallen upon us is the cascading flow of information on
the click of a finger which has often fueled the turmoil within rather than
assuages it. An aware mind is leashed with misery. This overflow of information
is deeply linked with the growing mental health cases around the world. The
internet has, simultaneously, provided both the outlet for ranting out one's
mind and the consciousness of the all perceptible miseries of the world. We are
drowning in information and the value of a commodity is in its ability to hold
our attention. No wonder, ADHD is on an all-time high. Lack of Knowledge is a
problem but, the inability to fight it is exponentially is better than battling
an incomprehensible enemy. Plato's 'allegory of the cave' is still relevant
today and knowledge is still the single-best weapon in our arsenal. We don't
know a lot but one thing is clear: Ignorance is not bliss.
And we never know when we are entangled into the world of artificial
intelligence and are dependent on what is portrayed, rather than discovering the
unfathomable conflict going inside us. So, it’s high time to realize the
gravity of seriousness what the greater demon is planning up to destroy the reasonable
nexus between the organic mental faculty and inner instinct to respond to it realistically.
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