Lost between the lines: Mental Health in Media
Mental health in Mainstream Media Recently, I have come across articles in the newspapers with very strange headlines “Bengaluru wife ends life after husband fails to get her chocolate “ and “Angered over haircut, teenage boy jumps to death from 16th floor in Maharashtra’s Bhayandar”. I am pretty sure that you must have come across such sensational news articles while scrolling through the internet. At first glance, I found them silly and quite flabbergasted by such news items. Then I started thinking as to why would anyone choose death over haircut or chocolate? Have we lost basic thinking capabilities, reasoning skills and impulse control that we think it’s better to die if we don’t get our favourite food? My experience with dealing with patients coming with self-harm behaviours made me reflect on such news pieces in a different light because even for patients who have lost all reality contact do not consider suicide as the first option. For many, it’s the last option after they tri...