Mental Health: Blogging with a Purpose #CauseAChatter

 I live in a society where "mad" is still abuse, "mentally challenged" is conveniently used for criminals, murderers and rapists and mental health thus stands stigmatized.

Being a survivor and an activist I have witnessed this invisibility of mental health in the social discourse around me and the resulting insensitivity about both the survivors and their caregivers is appalling.

I am also a Psychological First Aid practitioner and in my practice, have come across so many people completely unaware of even basics of mental health here.

I also wrote an e-book Mental Health: A Primer with the same purpose. 

Still, I feel a lot of people are unaware of so much about mental health around me that more and more needs to be written, so I will be writing about mental health all this year for this campaign and if time and energy allows also doing Hindi translations/paraphrase of the same on my Hindi blog too.

This post is in collaboration with Blogchatter's Blogging with a Purpose  . If you are a blogger and want to join your voice for a cause close to your heart, do lookup.

USEFUL UNSOLICITED ADVICE 101

- Language is one of the most potent tools that the human race has. Use it judicially. Sometimes in dissidence, we tend to use the same language that the oppression has, for instance, sexist language in feminist protests or casteist/communal language in social protests.

- Practice as you preach. Those of us who have had the privilege of education and awareness must use our misery/discrimination if any to raise awareness. If you hide it under the garb of "happy pictures" you are feeding the monster called patriarchy.

-Stop fake news and information.Before you press that forward/share button introspect, ALWAYS INDICATE SOURCE.

-Understand terminology. Mental health terms must not be used to describe criminal behavior. Poverty or discrimination must not be glorified in even art or poetry.

-Write/speak against the grain responsibly. Argue responsibly. Having ideological differences is alright, using those to demean the other personally never is remember that.

-Do not perpetuate myths/cliches that are discriminatory- look at this misery(Pain pornography), Disability is bravery(Inspiration porn), hashtags like #couplegoals #momisgreat and #happilyeverafter that perpetuate gender stereotypes.

-Respect CONSENT both online and offline. Do not pester people to add you or interact with you. As much as it is your right to approach them once it is their right to say NO or not react at all.

-Don't follow herds, if in a large group be a well-informed crowd.