Note to readers: Healing Space is a weekly series that helps you dive into your mental health and take charge of your wellbeing through practical DIY self-care methods.
The facts of the case of AI ethics expert and start-up founder Suchana Seth are still emerging. We do not know and cannot say if she really killed her 4-year-old son at a hotel-apartment stay in Goa, as is being alleged. Investigations are underway. What we do know is it is extremely tragic that a child has died, and that a seemingly brilliant, educated, qualified and once successful woman alleged domestic violence as her marriage fell apart, and was in a disturbed state of mind. It is tragic that she had nowhere to turn, no shelters, no interventions, and no aid that might have prevented this tragedy from happening. Whatever the emerging facts may be, suitable and urgent mental health interventions are needed by those who face crises in their lives. However, the problem is, we neither cultivate a culture of seeking help nor encourage it at a stage when it can actually make a difference.
While the foster care system in countries like the US is deeply broken and flawed in its own way, the availability of a state-run child protection helpline and cell that can be alerted to children in difficult situations, can help prevent the worst outcomes for many neglected and abused young people. The availability of women’s shelters where abused women can take their children to spend a night or nights until they are able to make other arrangements for themselves, can prevent them from feeling cornered and considering worst-case scenarios such as suicide or taking the life of their dependents.
The courts need a readiness to consider and fast track cases, consider appeals and police stations need to not moralise by pushing for family reconciliation instead of registering reports. Doctors and pediatricians, schoolteachers and counsellors must be trained and equipped to intervene if they spot signs of abuse in children. Alongside, we need a culture of not assuming that mothers, or indeed fathers, always want the best for their children. To recognize that there are also, realistically, abusive and negligent parents and caregivers around, and to not sweep abuse under the carpet at the family or societal level. Holistic support infrastructure such as these allow for prevention and remedial action at multiple levels.
There must be a collective responsibility towards the care of minor children. While we live in a country where resources are already stretched thin, corruption, negligence, a shortage of funds and hands, and lack of vision towards the plight of children urgently needs remedy. Further we need widespread education in the vocabulary of mental health, and seeking help, so that children are empowered to recognize their own circumstances and emotional states and reach out to the nearest responsible adult or caregiver, whether at school or in the extended family and neighbourhood in ways that keep them safe.
All criminals cannot use the excuse of poor mental health to explain away their actions. If anything, research shows that people with mental health concerns are more likely to be victims of violent crime. Criminals of violent crimes are typically sociopaths who typically function without empathy, a detachment from emotions and lacking insight into the consequences of their actions. Detecting sociopaths and their actions is a highly specialized field of study that intersects between psychiatry, psychology, sociology and criminology. It is hard to say what pushes a person to kill, but suffice to say it is not the regular choice. People who are depressed or confused, have a foggy state of mind, are more likely to consider harming themselves than others. The mental health interventions are therefore more required for victims and potential victims in immediate day-to-day society. Whether it is a traumatized child, an abused wife or daughter-in-law or daughter, a man facing a mental health breakdown due to overwork, abuse, burnout or an addiction, elder abuse, bullying, whatever the circumstance of victimhood, timely, repeated, regular mental health interventions allow these to be detected early and resolved.
Children are often the most helpless victims because they not only cannot seek help for themselves without a parent’s permission, but often they are co-opted into the custodial battle. Children are often made pawns in a fight between adults and asked to pick sides. When that happens, children feel guilt and sadness and feel obliged to support the adult that comes to them with their suffering. The child then feels helpless because they do not know of ways in which to help and can often end up blaming themselves for adult circumstances. This can lead to nightmares, bed wetting, anxiety, panic attacks, poor performance at school and depression. It is vitally important that when adults are going through tough times, whether financial distress or divorce or illnesses of their own, children are provided the optimal support such that they are not crushed in the process.
Mental health interventions do not kick in well in a crisis. As with savings, they have to be cultivated step by step when the going is good such that when a crisis hits, people know how to deploy the tools they have learned i.e. they can dip into their savings. This is how good mental health interventions work. They are set up as an SIP over time and not necessarily in a crisis. They are periodically serviced and checked up on, practiced, such that when things fall apart, people know where to go, how to think, whom to ask for help, and have a huge emotional resource to rely upon.
We need to create a culture of seeking help, encouraging others within the family and extended social neighbourhood to seek counselling, therapy, spiritual practice and stable mental and physical health practices on an ongoing basis. We need to destigmatize leaning on professionally trained caregivers for support and in fact encourage reaching out, so that individuals do not reach a tipping point they can’t handle.
How to create a culture of seeking help
1. Visit your mental health practitioner on a periodic basis when things are going well.
2. Cultivate a toolkit of emotional hygiene. How to clarify thoughts and emotions. Encourage others in your family, friends and peer groups to access their own.
3. Establish a wide network of emotional support, both personal and professional.
4. Do not attempt to go it alone. It leads to repression of pain, grief, sorrow, rage which can implode your mental health when you least expect it.
5. Know and list your safe spaces, places and people you can rely on when things go south.
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