We live in the age of paradoxes.
Mobile phones have made us accessible at the press of a button but our ability to communicate is being compromised. Families go to a restaurant and everyone is in their own world. This happens with friends and work colleagues as well. Social media has shrunk the world and isolated individuals. We now have so much awareness of concepts such as the patriarchy and feminism. We are even more aware of violence and yet it continues. Mental health is quickly becoming a major issue and yet, care is not accessible to large populations, especially in rural areas.
As a wellness associate with Parity Lab, my job is to make mental wellness accessible to communities via the NGOs that serve them.
Parity Lab accelerates the journey of the founder and first-line leader of NGOs that work at the grassroots level to combat gender-based violence. The people working in these NGO’s as well as their communities grapple with mental wellness. They often come from low caste, low class, rural backgrounds. Many of them have experienced violence first hand. We provide mental wellness support to the founder and one leader in their organization and further extend this support by facilitating group sessions when we visit them. My first visit was phenomenal. I loved doing the work and I learned a lot in the process.
I facilitated a mental wellness session for the team of women who come from the community. They are between the ages of 19 and 24, with a couple of women slightly older. Somewhere near Varanasi, the place was small, there was no electricity, and the weather was scorching, yet the workshop came alive with their participation. We touched on emotions, beliefs, boundaries, power, their relationship to themselves, their strength, and what they discovered about themselves. We also spoke about some challenges they face. They expressed that they were dealing with both physical and emotional boundary violations, being put down, not having enough freedom, and dealing with the stress of working outside as well as at home. They struggle with the inability to express their emotions, know and express their needs, and believe in themselves and their own resourcefulness. I am not sure how much one small workshop can do, but for someone who has not received anything, this may well be a starting point for living a more peaceful and free life.
I then visited some of their work locations. I observed the connections they are forming with women and children in different villages and the tasks they are taking on, from teaching women to stitch and sign their names to teaching and supporting young women and children in getting a formal education, developing leadership among young women, and speaking about violence, patriarchy, equality, power, and so on.
Despite the conditions in the villages, lack of electricity, poverty, and lack of proper housing, there is movement. There are the challenges of early marriage, intimate partner violence, having to work as well as learn, overcome by persistence, willingness to learn, and enthusiasm.
Mental wellness unfortunately gets seen as a very individual centric work.
We forget that we are all products of societal, parental, cultural influences. They inform our beliefs, values and world-views. Even though needs are universal, their acceptance is cultural. For example, in India, sexual needs, which are actually biological, are rarely spoken about. Girls, when treated as secondary or liabilities, do not get their need for acceptance, care, and acknowledgment met. Boys are also inhibited from showing “softer” emotions. Domestic violence is rarely acknowledged as a crime. All these look like separate issues but are actually part of the larger context where these individuals need. Saying no to them is something alien. Their "no" does not have value when it comes to serving, cooking, meeting the husband's sexual needs, following the norms of what to wear and what not to wear, and so on. Thus boundary violation is not really spoken about. Since anger is not something they can show, it gets converted to internalised disgust and sorrow.
Mental wellness cannot be addressed as an individual level issue. It has to be tailored to the context. Every definition that may be applicable in one context, needs to change with it. Listening to them, acknowledging their reality, working with their reality is required for any mental wellness initiative to succeed. I saw their context for the first time. It was my first ever visit in a rural setting. Their struggles to earn money, their enthusiasm for changing their lives, and their willingness to accept whatever was offered to them all deeply touched and touched me.
In a village where children were being taught to write their names, I saw a woman watching them close by. I approached her hoping to talk to her. She told me the conditions in the village. They had stayed there for three generations but there was no electricity, houses were made of mud and there were other challenges. Then she said “when these children learn, I also come when I have time. I have learned to write my name.” She had pride in her eyes, and I felt happy. They may look like small steps but for people who have not been given any attention to these small acts are precious.
My wish after this field visit is to spread the basics of mental wellness, help people understand and transform the roots of all kinds of violence and spread ways of leading a more peaceful, happy life. I think so much resourcefulness, creativity, strength, courage is present in the poorest of conditions. It just needs a catalyst to bear fruit. If the world becomes trauma informed and understands mental wellness, we will have a more kind and peaceful world.
Is that too big a dream?
by Dr. Sanjyot Pethe, Wellness Associate at Parity Lab
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