I remember taking a friend of mine with me to the psychiatrist and when the doctor said that I have depression, he got furious and began screaming the words, “why does she call you loosu (mental)?” This is the perception our country holds today about depression, anxiety or any sort of mental illness.
Let me make this clear to Bigg Boss and to the rest of the audience: mental illness doesn’t mean a person is mad or mental illness is not a bad word. If someone says she/he is mentally ill or disturbed, they are not cursing them or swearing at them. Hospitals treating mental illness is not an asylum or hospitals for mad people.
For the past week or two, the most loved contestant Oviya has not been in the right frame of mind. Dr. Sivabalan rightfully told The News Minute, “A show like this, if it is really not scripted, brings to the forefront the real personalities of people. They are living in a closed environment and it brings out the survival instinct in each. Some do this by getting along with everyone, some choose not to react to anything and keep others at a distance, some try to assert their personality over that of others. It also depends on the different tolerance levels of people.”
While Julie’s survival instinct was to mingle with the others, Oviya’s wasn’t and that isn’t wrong. However, that has mentally made her unstable on another level. She almost tried to kill herself at the pool in yesterday’s episode. Like Gayathri said, “You were that Oviya who was having a lot of fun and didn’t care about anything in the first week, try to get back to that situation.”
Although I wish the contestants realized about what she has been going through sooner than ever. They found her annoying, irritating, repulsive and Sakthi went to the extent of wanting to slap her. All they had to do was sit her down, talk to her and mostly understand her confusion and what she is going through. The housemates cannot be blamed as well. After all, they only represent the people who do not understand what mental illness is.
They helped her throughout the episode last night. They helped her meet a psychiatrist and were with her, talking to her. That is what who is mentally unstable requires, a lot of patience and understanding. Taking help is never wrong and hence, encourage them to take medical help.
We as a society must always help and support those that need help from us and all we need to do is be good listeners and nothing more.
Yes, their behaviour changes and they aren’t people we knew but they are in trouble. They are confused, angry, upset and crying all the time because their mind goes out of their control no matter how hard they try.
Scripted or not, Oviya represented what a person with mental illness usually goes through and how the society never tries to understand them. Depression and mental illness is a serious issue, folks. It very much exists and it is as dangerous to health as cancer is – it leads a person to kill oneself if at that final stage.
It is important for us, as a society to inculcate and educate those around us about this and let them know that this is serious and tomorrow this could affect you as well!
It was absolutely low of the show to have created a task demeaning mental illness making it all the more worse for the viewers to judge.
To quote Dr. Sivabalan’s statement to the News minute lastly, “We always think of mental illness in the extreme. We believe that these patients are dangerous or we make fun of them. This is how they are portrayed in the mainstream. We’ve been talking about mental health for the last 200 years. Nobody is immune to mental illnesses.”