New Delhi: An AIIMS psychiatrist on Tuesday warned that excessive screen time and dependency on social media were leading to loneliness and social disconnect among the youth, and suggested people make “real and not reel” friends.
Dr Nand Kumar, professor in the Department of Psychiatry at AIIMS Delhi, expressed concern over “increasing” cases of suicide, especially among youth.
He attributed many such cases to an inability to handle mental pressure, discomfort, rejection, criticism and tough real-life situations.
To enhance resilience and promote emotional well-being among youth, AIIMS-Delhi, in collaboration with CBSE, has been running a programme, MATE, in Delhi-NCR schools.
The Mind Activation Through Education, or MATE, programme has been developed indigenously by the AIIMS-Delhi and is aimed at helping children enhance resilience and cope better with stress and anxiety.
MATE is an adolescent wellness project that works not on mental illness, but on wellness, said Dr Kumar, who heads the programme.
“The programme emphasises that every child should have five friends with whom they can share their feelings and emotions,” he said.
“The idea is to teach children to build real friends instead of reel friends,” he added.
Under MATE, after five days of training, counsellors are placed in schools, where they observe children’s behaviour and then return with their observations for discussion and analysis.
Dr Kumar said that emotional health is an integral part of health and that a healthy mind leads to a healthy body. It influences how people think, feel, and behave in daily life, and also affects decision-making, stress management, and relationships.
He said that our brain needs relaxation to think fresh and innovative, and stressed that it was not necessary to be busy, planning and doing some activity all the time.
“We try to avoid boredom, but boredom is important…it is essential for mental health to be able to think fresh,” he said.
The mental state of a population affects the economic state of a country, Dr Kumar said.
The WHO estimates that the burden of mental health in India is 2,443 disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) per 10,000 population. The age-adjusted suicide rate per 100,000 population is 21.1.
The economic loss due to mental health conditions, between 2012-2030, is estimated at USD 1.03 trillion, Dr Kumar said.
Ideally, India should have one psychiatrist per 100,000 people, but the current number is only 0.7. The WHO recommends three psychiatrists per 100,000 population.
Dr Kumar said that 70-90 percent of people do not receive the mental-health treatment they need, mostly because of a lack of awareness and stigma.
