As the Mental Health professionals in Nagaland observe the World Mental Health Day on the 12th of October, along with the rest of the world’s mental health professionals, allow me to share a few running thoughts of mine on the need of complete mental health for a student to become a successful and contributing person for the society.
‘Health is Wealth’ is a popular saying we hear it often. However, this saying cannot be fulfilled or justified until and unless a person is perfectly fit in terms of his/her mental health as well. The mental health has become the need of the hour in order to maintain a long and healthy life. Thus, we must shift our focus and contribution for saving the future of our society by concentrating on mental health of the students in particular. A student’s life is the most beautiful yet challenging, troublesome and hectic. It is a very crucial phase of their life whereby students are preparing themselves for their future. It is neither their grades, extra co-curricular activities nor their physique on sporting skills that should be given importance upon instead of their mental health which has to be maintained for the proper undertaking of all the above mentioned activities.
Emotional wellbeing is the basic requirement of mental health. This is often destroyed in a student’s life as being in their teens which complicates their lives with all sorts of problems involved in it. Some of them are as follows:
1. The most common problem faced by all the students is the pressure to excel and get good academic grades which does not inculcate the competitive spirit in them. But in the course of pursuing for excellence, it destroys them from justice so much so that most of the suicide cases are related to the academic stress and pressure.
2. The dissatisfaction and unhappiness of studying or pursuing a career or subject in which is not of one’s interest but forced upon by the parents, pressure of the society as well as ones peer groups finally leads to poor results, remorseful and stressful life.
3. The relationship problems which the students undergo are always stressful as they deal with the parents, friends, teachers, society and sometimes with broken homes as well. Sadly amidst such relationship and Web of chaos in which they live, sometimes they get tangled into it so much so that they are emotionally drained and exhausted almost all the time.
4. The drug, alcohol and tobacco abuse is another problem which is faced by almost majority of the students due to the influence of media and peer pressure leads them into a world of addiction, loneliness and sometimes even death.
5. Further since the present students are living in the age of technology, even this technology adds up to their problems as the various cyber crimes, social media addiction and bullying often makes them withdrawn, unhappy and even broken from within.
Finally, as a result of the above mentioned points, many of the students destroy their own mental health which blocks the proper functioning of their body and lives as well which often leads to depression and suicides in the end. This menace can be very much prevented if we are willing to maintain a student’s mental health. And for that the first step to be taken by all of us is to start talking about it and accept this health problem. After all it is hard to fight a war inside our head without proper support from others. We need to face this mental menace with utmost courage and dedication much more than the way we fight against other diseases. Indeed we literally need to transform ourselves in to the white blood cells and defeat this disease. And the most important step towards maintaining health is to seek help from those persons who are professionally qualified for the day to day difficulties and problems. For instance, in my school we have our own school counsellor who is always present to help us regarding our academic, personal and career oriented problems as well. Undertaking counseling not only solves our problems but at the same time makes us happy and gives us a path amidst our confused life. Even for me, amidst my academic pressures and career confusions counseling has helped me a lot as it has given me a new direction. The new hope has made me a more determined, focused individual and endowed with an equally strong mental health as well.
Therefore indeed counseling is the perfect remedy to maintain a student’s mental health. Having said and done all these points, being a student myself, I cannot guarantee you that it is not at all easy to live this life and fight with all the problems which come to us every day, especially without the weapon of the so called mental health. Therefore time has come for all of us the teachers, students, parents and the society to join hands for the cause of maintaining a good mental health among students so that the future of the country will grow with the perfect attitude and qualities required to make a prosperous and a happy country. Lastly, I would like to request all the students to take a pledge today on this occasion of mental health day that we should never neglect our mental health but instead always maintain it in order to lead ourselves into a happy and successful life.
