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Friday, June 28, 2013

Very valuable information for all the expectant and the new Mothers.

Very valuable information for all the expectant and the new Mothers. 
Don't forget to share, it can really help lot of people. 
Postpartum depression (PPD), also called postnatal depression, is a type of clinical depression which can affect women, typically after childbirth. Few coping tips for postpartum depression.

Photo: Very valuable information for all the expectant and the new Mothers. 
Don't forget to share, it can really help lot of people. 
Postpartum depression (PPD), also called postnatal depression, is a type of clinical depression which can affect women, typically after childbirth. Few coping tips for postpartum depression.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Aasra in the Wall Street Journal

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/06/11/indias-suicide-problem/
Saturday, June 15, 2013 13:53:0 GMT
 India Real Time

India’s Suicide Problem

 

 

By Atish Patel
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Shown, Jiah Khan.
The apparent suicide of 25-year-old Bollywood actor Jiah Khan last week was greeted with shock in India, a country where suicide is the second-most common cause of death among people aged 15 to 29, according to a study in The Lancet.
Of the 114,800 males who took their own lives in India in 2010, 40% were aged 15 to 29, while 56% of the 72,100 women were in that age bracket, the study said. The report’s lead author, Vikram Patel, a psychiatrist and joint director of the Centre for Global Mental Health, says female suicides in India are often linked to relationships, including domestic violence and forced marriage. For men, the major reasons were related to work and financial difficulties, he told India Real Time.
“It reflects the general role of men and women in India,” Mr. Patel said.
In India, people carry out suicide mainly by self-poisoning with pesticide and hanging, which are more lethal than methods typically used in the West like overdosing on non-prescribed drugs, Mr. Patel said.
Public health interventions such as restricting access to pesticides might help prevent many suicide deaths in India, Mr. Patel wrote in The Lancet report, which said there were about 187,000 suicides in India in 2010, the second highest in the world after China. The fact that these two nations have the most suicides is in itself unsurprising given their large populations.
India’s suicide rate is about 16 per 100,000 people a year, the study said. The rate in the U.S. in 2010 was 12.4 per 100,000 people, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while in the U.K. in 2011 it was 11.8 per 100,000, the Office for National Statistics said. Countries with higher rates include South Korea, Greenland and Eastern European nations like Lithuania, reports show.
Through rapid urbanization, India has witnessed a change in family structure, with people moving out of joint families into nuclear families. Although the effect of this change has not been studied in detail, some experts believe this has impacted India’s suicide rate.
“Families now are fractured and the support systems in place earlier are not working,” said Johnson Thomas from Aasra, a Mumbai-based organization that runs a 24-hour suicide prevention helpline.
The confidential helpline, which has been operating for 15 years, gets 35 calls a day, Mr. Thomas said. That adds up to about 12,775 a year. The majority of calls are from men, who struggle more than women to express their feelings, Mr. Thomas added.
“Indian society doesn’t allow men to be emotional… they don’t really have anyone to confide in,” he said.
In a study published in 2011, an international team of health researchers said India had the worst rate of severe depression of 18 countries surveyed, with 36% of respondents showing at least five symptoms, such as loss of appetite and a sense of worthlessness, for a period of two weeks or more.
That study also showed that women were twice as likely as men to suffer from depression.
There is a lack of specialist mental health experts and psychiatric clinics in rural India, where more suicides occur. According to The Lancet report, suicide rates in rural India are about twice as high as in urban areas. The problem is exacerbated by the easy availability of pesticides and a lack of emergency care, the report noted.
Clinics addressing mental health issues like depression have opened in cities in recent years. But there is a stigma in getting psychiatric treatment, doctors and experts say.
“People continue to have a closed mindset related to mental illness,” said Sanjay Chugh, a New Delhi-based psychiatrist who runs his own private clinic.
“Mental illness is still understood as a form of disease which will be ‘fixed’ by faith healers, a divine intervention or through rituals or prayers,” he added.
Also, suicide is a crime in India.
In a 2011 ruling, India’s Supreme Court asked Parliament to consider quashing the law, but no action has been taken. Under the law, a suicide survivor can be sentenced with a one year prison term or a fine, or both.
In a 2007 report in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry, Lakshmi Vijaykumar, who runs a suicide prevention network called Sneha in the southern Indian city of Chennai, said that making suicide illegal has proved counterproductive.
“Emergency care to those who have attempted suicide is denied as many hospitals and practitioners hesitate to provide the needed treatment fearful of legal hassles,” she wrote in the report.
“The actual data on attempted suicides becomes difficult to ascertain as many attempts are described to be accidental to avoid entanglement with police and courts,” she added.
Last year, the government drafted a bill to decriminalize the act of attempting suicide but it hasn’t yet been introduced for discussion in Parliament.
“More than legalization of the act, what is needed is spreading knowledge and making people more mindful and sensitive toward mental health as a field, as it would automatically open doors for devising means and methods to combat it,” Mr. Chugh said.
Worldwide, up to one million people die by suicide every year, according to the World Health Organization. In the last 45 years, suicide rates have increased by 60%, says the WHO, and suicide is among the three leading causes of death among people aged 15 to 44.
A post-mortem report said the cause of Ms. Khan’s death was asphyxia due to hanging. It ruled out foul play.
Atish Patel is a London-born multimedia journalist based in Delhi. You can follow him on Twitter @atishpatel.
Follow India Real Time on Twitter @IndiaRealTime.

Aasra in Governance Now magazine

 http://governancenow.com/news/regular-story/elegy-jiah-khan-yeh-hai-mumbai-meri-jaan

Elegy for Jiah Khan: Yeh hai Mumbai meri jaan

Famous at 19, gone at 25: why is life a strife for the young and restless in Bollywood, and Mumbai in general?
Geetanjali Minhas | Mumbai | June 06 2013
If Jiah Khan’s suicide has taught us anything, it is the uncertainty of life. But shorn of the philosophical touch, it’s a tale gone horribly wrong for a young aspirant in the Maximum City.
While Jiah’s suicide by hanging at her flat in Juhu, an upscale suburban, has got the media spotlight for obvious reasons – the showbiz connection – what cannot be overlooked is the fact that Mumbai, for young outsiders itching to make a career, can be good and evil, inviting and foreboding, warm and cold, enticing and frightening. And all at the same time.
Also read: Jiah death brings to fore life, strife of young India
For the sake of attention, if nothing else, we might talk about Bollywood, but minus a few details here and there it could well be relevant to any struggling, striving, talented youth in Mumbai – more so those coming from outside.
Exactly 20 years and 2 months after the mysterious death of actress Divya Bharti – she died after falling from fifth floor of a building, allegedly jumping off in an inebriated state on April 5, 1993 – Jiah’s suicide has brought to focus the issue of depression, disillusionment and loneliness in the showbiz industry of a city that is said to never sleep.
At first glance, the two deaths are as different as chalk is from cheese. Divya Bharti, then 19, was a more successful actor, married to producer Sajid Nadiawala, had plum projects on hand and was said to be on way to a glorious Bollywood career when she died.
In contrast, Jiah Khan, 25, started off with a bang as a teen (she acted opposite Amitabh Bachchan in Nishabd in 2007, and even bagged the Filmfare best debutant nomination), and then headed nowhere (supporting roles opposite Aamir Khan in Ghajini and Akshay Kumar in Housefull, in 2010; and nothing thereafter). Jiah was also reportedly undergoing problems in her relationship with her boyfriend: actor Aditya Pancholi’s son Suraj.
And if those weren’t enough, Jiah’s mother Rabiya Amin, a small-time Bollywood actor in early ’80s, has said that Jiah had auditioned for a film in Hyderabad  on Sunday and was unhappy about it.
All this leads to one conclusion: she was under stress, immense stress. Those who knew Jiah say she was also despondent and disillusioned about her career and personal life. All three are adjective boxes that Divya Bharti might have checked had she been asked to state her state of mind towards her last days — if the industry grapevine is to believed, she was  being pressured to ‘compromise’ with underworld elements.
Why is Bollywood/Mumbai so tough to crack?
Charmed by stories of success by rank outsiders – Shah Rukh Khan and Akshay Kumar in films and in every other arena of professional life – and the opening of more doors in television, fashion, beauty pageant, and reality show circuits, tens of hundreds land in the city of dreams. In showbiz, an abysmal 1 to 3 percent make  it.
While there is no success formula, ‘casting couch’ is said to come as a package deal in getting a break in  Bollywood – insiders call it an “accepted fact”, though most established  actors choose to deny it.
The film industry’s larger-than-life image dwarfs the perils and vices, and the ‘villains’ who come in many shades and hues –in the garb of misleading casting agents, secretaries, producers, directors and hangers on. In a hugely cut-throat competitive industry, there are no true friends.
And then there’s money, a key to struggle for both showbiz aspirants and others in professional life: house rents are high, clothes and accessories are expensive, and you need a good car to flaunt your status. Barring the handful who make it, it is a struggle for the rest to maintain  this façade.
Industry insiders say ingenious ways are invented  to  keep the wheel moving: those with a thick skin, a strong mind  and nerves of steel can withstand the multiple pressures, while the vulnerable and the gullible get sucked deeper in the  muck and grime and often get into alcohol, substance abuse and give in to sexual exploitation.
Not that all these cases lead to suicide, but many do – and it’s a fact writ large enough for us to wake up and smell the coffee. According to a report in aasrasuicideprevention.blogspot.in, a site on preventing suicides and addressing depression, a study on suicide mortality in India published by The Lancet last year pointed out that suicides were the second leading cause of death among 15- to 29-year-olds. The National Crime Records Bureau reported 1,35,585 suicides in 2011.
In many sense, Bollywood is no different from any other high-pressure profession in Mumbai today, and suicides are not that uncommon a social phenomenon. Poignant but true, Mumbai is no place for the fainthearted. Like that Johny Walker song put it so aptly, “Aye dil hai mushkil jeena yahan, zara hatt ke zara bachke, yeh hai Bambai meri jaan.”

Aasra in the Midday (05 June 2013)

http://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/2013/jun/050613-expert-speak-girl-interrupted.htm

Expert speak: Girl, interrupted

With suicide cases on the rise in the country, psychology experts speculate on what could have driven Jiah Khan to end her life

June 05, 2013

Mumbai
Shakti Shetty
 

 
Ever since the news about Jiah Khan started doing the rounds, what’s everyone thinking about is what could have driven the young actress to end her life so abruptly. And what’s more alarming is that with every passing year, there seems to be more and more suicide cases being reported in the country.
Photos: Jiah Khan - Snapshots from the past
Jiah Khan
In a medical study published in 2012, the estimated number of suicides in India in 2010 was about 1,87,000. A large proportion of adult suicide deaths were found to occur between the ages of 15 years and 29 years. Incidentally, of the five lakh people reported to die of suicide worldwide every year, 20 per cent are Indians.
While in an industry where one-upmanship is rife, there is always pressure to perform. The entertainment industry has always been demanding but to what extent? We spoke to psychology experts to get their views on what could have prompted the 25-year-old to take such a drastic step.
Missing Plan B?
Seema Hingorrany, clinical psychologist and author, points out the lack of planning in case of professional disasters. “In a metropolitan city like Mumbai, depression often goes undetected. There’s a deep sense of loneliness that even the immediate family or friends can’t see.


Especially, in the case of an actress like Jiah who has seen some instances of success only to face a downward slide in her acting career. So what she didn’t have was a Plan B. Unfortunately, she was left with a Plan A that simply didn’t work.”
Photos: Who was Jiah Khan
Turns out the toughest part in showbiz is not to bag stardom but to sustain it. Johnson Thomas of Aasra, a helpline against suicide, says several factors could have contributed to the actress’ drastic decision. “The young actress in question did seek stardom and even received some with her debut film. Later, she was seen in minor roles. Sadly, the film industry seems great provided you’ve got work and it turns cruel as soon as you run out of work.”
Clinical psychologist Varkha Chulani emphasises on the overwhelming possibility of depression. “From a clinical point of view, we don’t know yet whether it was an impulsive suicide or a depressive suicide.

The former is a phase where a person decides that life is not worth living and the latter is a case of elongated hopelessness. In Jiah’s case, we’ve read about her break-up and struggling career but then she also reportedly went to audition for a Telugu film. Someone with a severe case of depression won’t even be able to think of work.”
Life’s like that
Lata Shenava, counsellor and educator, takes a different route while explaining the more deep-rooted problem related to parenting. “There’s something structurally wrong with the way kids are raised nowadays. For the most part, they are put in a comfort-oriented environment and expected to grow strong, which is impossible. As a result, we see youngsters not being able to face challenges.”