By Sunil Sarpal

Àre we talking about etiquettes like what to wear, when and how to set the table? Eg. with cutlery, forks always go on the left. Knives on the right. Glassware is set above the knives. In dressing, put on high-end pieces such as blazers, jumpsuits, and quality shoes to look more elegant, mature, and refined. Adopt a smart, casual look to dress fashionably and stylishly? Answer is a big NO.

Actually, the following 21 etiquettes are based on ethics and human values. You are welcome to expand the list

1. Don’t call someone more than twice continuously. If they don’t pick up your call, presume they have something important to attend to;

2. Return money that you have borrowed even before the person that borrowed from you remembers or asks for it. It shows your integrity and character. Same goes with umbrellas, pens and lunch boxes.

3. Never order the expensive dish on the menu when someone is treating you to a lunch/dinner.

4. Don’t ask awkward questions like ‘Oh so you aren’t married yet?’ Or ‘Don’t you have kids?’ or ‘Why didn’t you buy a house?’ Or ‘why don’t you buy a car?’ For God’s sake it isn’t your problem;

5. Always open the door for the person coming behind you. It doesn’t matter if it is a guy or a girl, senior or junior. You don’t grow small by treating someone well in public;

6. If you take a taxi with a friend and he/she pays now, try paying next time;

7. Respect different shades of opinions. Remember what’s 6 to you will appear 9 to someone facing you. Besides, second opinion is good for an alternative;

8. Never interrupt people talking. Allow them to pour it out. As they say, hear them all and filter them all;

9. If you tease someone, and they don’t seem to enjoy it, stop it and never do it again. It encourages one to do more and it shows how appreciative you’re;

10. Say “thank you” when someone is helping you.

11. Praise publicly. Criticize privately;

12. There’s almost never a reason to comment on someone’s weight. Just say, “You look fantastic.” If they want to talk about losing weight, they will;

13. When someone shows you a photo on their phone, don’t swipe left or right. You never know what’s next;

14. If a colleague tells you they have a doctors’ appointment, don’t ask what it’s for, just say “I hope you’re okay”. Don’t put them in the uncomfortable position of having to tell you their personal illness. If they want you to know, they’ll do so without your inquisitiveness;

15. Treat the cleaner with the same respect as the CEO. Nobody is impressed at how rude you can treat someone below you but people will notice if you treat them with respect;

16. If a person is speaking directly to you, staring at your phone is rude;

17. Never give advice until you’re asked;

18. When meeting someone after a long time, unless they want to talk about it, don’t ask them their age and salary;

19. Mind your business unless anything involves you directly – just stay out of it;

20. Remove your sunglasses if you are talking to anyone in the street. It is a sign of respect. Moreso, eye contact is as important as your speech; and

21. Never talk about your riches in the midst of the poor. Similarly, don’t talk about your children in the midst of the barren.

22. After reading you are welcome to suggest more points to ponder over in the comments box below the article on the website.

A Yuga Cycle (a.k.a. chatur yuga, maha yuga, etc.) is a cyclic age (epoch) in Hindu cosmology. Each cycle lasts for 4,320,000 years (12,000 divine years[a]) and repeats four yugas (world ages): Krita (Satya) Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga, and Kali Yuga.

(The above reference from Wikipedia is about Hindu ages. It is not to be confused with Buddhist, Greek or Jain ages.)

The Kali Yuga, in Hinduism, is the fourth and worst of the four yugas (world ages) in a Yuga Cycle, preceded by Dvapara Yuga and followed by the next cycle’s Krita (Satya) Yuga. It is believed to be the present age, which is full of conflict and sin.

Ref:(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuga_Cycle)

KALYUG by Sunil Sarpal

Kali Yuga or Kalyug has taught innumerable lessons to human kind.

1) How to keep your elders and respect them

There are old homes for elders where they can live rest of their lives, away from the hum-drum of youth. Who is bothered whether they need anything, e.g. emotional stability, medicine, food, rest, peace etc. etc. At homes with their kids, they are treated like unwanted and waste furniture.

2) Mobile Phones and Laptops

Both use of mobile phones and laptops has distanced people from each other, friends, discussion, get-together etc. People have become slave to both mobile and laptop.

3) Widening gap between rich and poor and class distinction

The distance which already existed between rich and poor has widened further because of kalyug. The sight of poor is not tolerable to rich. In the eyes of rich people, poor people have become a liability.

Since rich and poor do not inter-mingle with each other, groups have developed which inter-act and inter-mingle among themselves. One more noticeable fact is people do not like each other. It was not the case before. Unless or until, the relationship revolves around ‘money’, it has no meaning

4) Behaviour of People

There is a drastic shift in the behaviour of people. They behave as if they have no emotions. Their only purpose of life is how to make money, whether hook or crook.

5) Corona Virus

With the arrival of Corona Virus, people have lost their near and dear ones. Corona Virus has taught how much value should be attached to human existence.

6) Three things rule the roost – Liquor, Non-veg., Money

It is a well-known fact that for the sake of liquor, one can go to any length in order to grab it. Non-veg food’s demand is on the increase. Kalyug’s human being does not shy-away from inflicting harm to animals.

Money makes the ma go. Money plays the central and pivotal role in one’s life.

7) Compassion-less Society

People have forgotten the meaning of ‘compassion’ in kalyug. People always look upwards and never towards downward. Extending a helping hand is the thing of past.

8) War Scenario

The news of one country invading the other is a common sight. Some countries fight for grabbing more and more land, whereas, some countries vie for show-casing their strength, so that they become a super- duper power. How much lives are lost and destruction takes place, nations are not bothered about it.

Whether you believe in the cycle theory of Yugas or not, one presumes that you will agree that as human beings we have to overcome negativity in our attitude and usher in the golden age of what is called The Satya Yuga Ed

This is a first of what may be a set of posts around the same theme- recovery in mental health or recovery from mental health issues, regaining one’s sense of wellbeing after an emotional/psychological setback.

The past year has gone in a lot of work in this area (also among the reasons I could not write on this blog). So now is the time to talk about the work which has been done away from the public eye.

Let me begin with the book, which comes out later this year, I put to bed a few months ago. Currently the last phase of that is underway- on the production front.

As an aside, a somewhat disconcerting thought which has always been there at the back of my head is that when we say the word ‘recovery’ in the context of mental health it conjures a particular kind of image. Recovery is often mistaken to be the recognition of someone’s suffering as a diagnostic reality. (Oh, but this was not the disconcerting thought I had in mind- it was about my book and how academic it is!)

“Oh, now I know why I was feeling so bad. I have anxiety after all“.

“I got a diagnosis of PTSD and chronic depression. I was also wondering what is going wrong.”

This description of suffering and its reframing into a diagnostic “truth” is what happens all the time in the field of mental health, something that troubles me immensely. But I will not go into that trouble right now. I better share with you what is the problem for me to solve here- the problem of talking about recovery.

I recovered from bipolar disorder. It may sound like something un-relatable, for one is not supposed to. In other words I am an outlier by all standards. This sudden disclosure is not part of my identity politics and I do not use mental health as a means for attention-seeking for I am troubled by it. For me my positioning is an ethical stance which comes with an agenda, largely research driven.

My agenda

My agenda post my own recovery was twosome. First it became to map my own recovery- for how did I recover?

I had no clear cut ways to share with another. I am talking about the year 2011. That was the time I started on recovery research, and a number of articles followed in diverse journals across the globe- Psychological Studies, Canadian Journal of Music Therapy, World Cultural Psychiatry Research Review and others (you are welcome to check them from my linkedin profile, ResearchGate or Academia networks. Oh yes, there is one article which is just a click away in which you can both read my (less academic) writing and hear my (self composed) songs (ghazals to be more precise). A longer piece of writing about the ghazal and its role in my healing is there in the World Cultural Psychiatry Research Review (2015).

My second agenda is/was to see if one person can recover, why are others not able to. Or rather, what is it that does not allow more people to recover- which became my PhD research (2016-2020)

Three decades in the field and five decades of life behind me, I know there was none other than this which was my goal, at least for now- recovery research. So while the research was done as a PhD and barriers to recovery found the next and more befuddling (may I say unenviable) option is how to tell others they can recover as well?

This is what I am doing nowadays- creating those other resources to disseminate the findings from my work, advocacy about recovery from mental health issues and suchlike things.

I am not going to say further in this post except having introduced the context- of who I am, where I come from and why I talk about recovery so much. And yes the resources I am busy creating- resources for recovery, advocacy and helping others recover just as well as me.

The first put to bed was the book of course. I will talk about it closer to the time it publishes (later this year)

The second is DIALOGUES FOR RECOVERY with the support and handholding by Vidya Sagar, Chennai. Here is a sample of that work, though we are not yet adept with this sort of work. Whatever else is unfolding is still firming up and I will share about them in subsequent posts. But I invite you to read the writing I have shared, which are scores of articles about my recovery and where I stand today, or what ideas I propagate via diverse means. The video that follows is a sample. There are at least five others of its siblings you can check from the same link and you get to hear my other ideas too (not mine solely, of course for we all stand on the shoulders of giants after all) …

It may be a common sense assumption that when someone enters the world of treatment for their emotional or mental health issues their intention is to be relieved of their suffering, emerge healed and whole from the treatment. But does it really happen? Is there any way to know how many people actually exit the (mental health) system? Is anything going on in the treatment process that can actually lead to someone’s recovery?

By and large experiences of vast numbers of people are that once they enter into the system they are told by psy-professionals (and other medical professionals) of all hues that they would now have to rely on psychiatric medication for the rest of their lives. This insistence on medication, which is borne out of the agreed upon knowledge which all psy-professions draw from, invalidates the day-to-day suffering of people into a predetermined ‘illness’ category, complete with a diagnosis and prognosis. In 2019, I wrote this article which can be downloaded or read here or here which problematizes this aspect of treatment and questions what the goals of such treatment are.

It may be common sense assumption that when someone enters the world of treatment for their emotional or mental health issues their intention is to be relieved of their suffering, and emerge healed and whole. But does it really happen? Is there any way to know how many people actually exit the (mental health) system? Is there anything going on in the treatment process that can actually lead to someone’s recovery?

Research suggests that recovery is mostly not a goal psy-professionals target when they start treating people for their mental health issues. For most people the starting of treatment itself is ‘recovery’ because according to professionals the fact that people’s suffering has been recognized is itself a great victory over their ignorance: of being a mere suffering, while it is actually a real ‘illness’. However the truth from a ‘patient’s’ perspective is that until people take pharmacological treatments they believe themselves to be ‘ill’ or ‘sick’ and therefore not quite recovered. From the ‘patients’ ‘ position it is the ending of the treatment process and exiting psychiatry that counts as real recovery, not interminable treatments. Whether or not mental illness is a real illness is itself a topic of big discussion and debate, which I postpone for another location as of now.

Knowledge about recovery missing

When there is a gap in the social knowledge about a situation it has consequences; both for individuals, families and society as a whole. For example until penicillin was discovered by Alexander Flemming, a number of people would die for reasons as simple as flu or pneumonia. Antibiotics gave a new lease of life to people around the world and heralded a new era which cumulatively brought newer efforts that prolonged human life expectancy.

In the context of mental health when people are not aware that they can recover and they choose instead of continue taking medication, their lack of information is a knowledge or information gap. Instead of recovery their bodies become sites for testing newer drugs, yet no advancement produces the desired ‘cure’. When drug treatments continue for decades people not only become chronic patients, they also slowly develop  co-morbid conditions such as thyroid malfunctions, liver damage, akathisia (I have written about it here), seizures, lupus and scores of other conditions, not to mention the ‘regular’ issues of hypertension, diabetes etc.

A lack of information about the possibility of recovery, which leads to never ending treatments is the issue  addressed here. This knowledge or the lack of it, also called epistemic ignorance in research, becomes an issue of justice first of all. When people have unequal access to information in society, even though we  live in the information age: the internet having created unprecedented possibilities for diffusion of ideas, only the idea of rising incidence of mental health issues are widely publicized, especially by the media and myriad psy-professionals. Treatments that do not end and progressively disable people, making them socially outcast and confined to their domestic spheres become an issue of justice- for what then are these treatments intended for?    

Why human rights issue

When a patient or their caregiver is told by a psy-professional that their treatment is for life more often than not they do not question it, but accept the ‘diagnosis’ as a truth or fact. Treating people and the inability to produce a healing or cure, or letting them exit psychiatry by supporting drug withdrawal is not common or heard of. Long periods of remaining on these drugs makes people more and more disabled and socially marooned   for they lose the confidence to deal with life, situations and other people.

The information of recovery is a right to knowledge about the idea of recovery. It is a   right of every person who is on drug treatments to know how long their treatments would be and what alternatives exist. Until people do not realize that their interests and rights are being compromised if they continue taking drugs passively it will not help them, while pharma corporations will keep making steady incomes and rising profits. This is a gap of knowledge which can only be filled by people who have taken the path of recovery or who understand the injustice of denying people the knowledge about their mind and body. In one of my future pieces I will write about how the new Mental Healthcare Act of 2017 also does NOT support recovery and ensures people remain ‘patients’ ad infinitum, once they enter into the mental health system (that being the work I did for my doctorate)

Thank you for reading. If there is something more you would like to know about recovery from mental health challenges, or have a personal concern, you are welcome to post a query or comment in the comment box below. Prateeksha would be happy to respond to it, if necessary, even with a new blog post.

Thoughts on Easter and Pesach by Raj Ayyar

First, a beautiful quote from that wise Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh:

Some people live as if they are already dead. There are people moving all around us, who are consumed by their past, terrified of the future, and stuck in emotions like anger and jealousy.
They are not alive–they are just walking corpses!
If you look around, you will see people going around like zombies.
We must practice resurrection. With an in-breath, bring yourself back to your body.
Joy, peace, and happiness are possible. You have an appointment with life, and that life is always in the here and now.

If one enters into the archetype of Easter, viewing the Resurrection story as great mytho-poetry, there is no conflict with scientific paradigms and language games. It’s only when religions assert their propositional truth (ex. the creationist dogma), literally that they embark on a collision course with science.

In that spirit, after the great bluesiness of Good Friday when there is a great emptying of the Christ, the immanent Logos on the cross (‘kenosis’ in Greek), there comes the light climax of the resurrection story.

On Good Friday, the Christian God incarnate is literally dead, and it is ironic that the great atheist Nietzsche (the child of a strongly Lutheran family), echoes the Good Friday motif when he declared in The Gay Science: ‘Have you not heard? God is dead.’

On Easter, Yeshua joins the pantheon of resurrected gods and heroes. including the Egyptian Osiris and the Greek Dionysus.
I think we all go through symbolic deaths and resurrections many times in one’s life–the loss of a relationship, a job, deep depression, and feelings of abandonment.

Resurrection is the symbolic transcendence of all that dead and deadening stuff, a new awakening of hope and joy.
Pesach or Passover is a Jewish festival that celebrates liberation from bondage, oppression, and dependency. In the great story of deliverance (Exodus in the Torah),

Whether you are Jewish or not, you may want to take inventory of all the circumstances in your life–connected to your job, relationships, career, academics, etc., that you find oppressive. What is the one toddler step you can take here and now to free yourself?

Of all the things one gets to hear about mental health, we often do not hear the word ‘recovery’. This implies that though society encourages people to examine distress-causing issues through the lens of suffering or accessing mental health treatments, the acceptance of people once they enter treatment regimens is markedly changed. Do treatments have to continue for life and if yes, then what is the goal of such treatments? Do we need to talk about recovery at all, for is not the start of treatment the start of recovery itself? The answer to this question is both yes and NO, for it depends upon whose perspective is considered. In other words, depending upon stakeholders the perspective changes!

Introducing the series

This weekly series, much like the writer behind it, is dedicated to the idea of ‘recovery’ . It brings together an experience of engagement with the field for nearly three decades, of which the last decade (2010-2020) is spent exclusively on the idea of researching about ‘recovery’ or whether it is viable for a vast majority of people. This recovery series will principally be a response to the queries the writer, in her role as therapist, receives from diverse platforms, including emails which reflect people’s struggles to reclaim their mental wellness and lives, instead of necessarily looking at them through diagnostic categories.

Why should recovery matter?

When someone accepts the medical diagnosis of a mental health issue, they enter into the stage of becoming a patient. In that role they keep on getting treatment for years and years, and there seems to be no exit; especially when the diagnosis is schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Not only psychoses, increasingly people are coming under the remit of mental health diagnoses and unable to exit the ‘system’ for a lack of alternatives to reclaim their mental health and a reinforcement received from different ‘professionals’, the social milieu saturated with claims of rising incidence of mental health issues and efforts which are purportedly directed at stigma reduction. In such an environment anyone who gets a diagnosis, and their families, are so overwhelmed by the one sided representation of mental health as an illness claim that to think about recovery is certainly not on anyone’s mind; but only to get themselves/loved one treated and manage the ‘illness’.

A vast majority of people are unaware that mental health issues are not measurable ‘illnesses’ which can be established by any scientific evidence, pathological tests or measurements via any scales etc. What can be called ‘illness’ is dependent largely on the capacity of the person who is observing the disturbed person to pronounce a behaviour as ‘illness’ or an ab-normalcy; which in research is called epistemic privilege (someone’s knowledge given more credibility than another’s). This is NOT to say that a person who is experiencing suffering is faking their suffering or masquerading. This is to acknowledge their suffering as a reality which needs a different handling than a simple classification into a predetermined diagnostic category. This is simply to say that mental health issues are not biological illnesses which are treatable via biochemical means, the way they are made out to be- they are deep emotional disturbances which can also be resolved by talking, discussion and other ways, which we will examine in future articles here.

Recovery matters because the alternative, of lifelong patient-hood, is a painful, debilitating, disabling option for people/families and thereafter for society. It not only makes people dependent and insecure it leads scores of families into a downward spiral of infirmity and poverty. The usual option someone has is to either remain a patient, or having become a patient for a short while, when overwhelmed by suffering, take the path to recovery by slowly building their capacities to deal with life and its vicissitudes- a journey familiar to this writer. From thereon springs this urge to share these ideas/research and findings with fellow human beings and let others comprehend that if one person can recover, so can another- for this is how one lamp kindles another’s wick.

In the forthcoming posts you will read (when the posts are not direct responses to queries)

• Why the idea of recovery is tied to human rights,
• What are the three ways in which people can understand recovery
• Why a majority of people do not believe they can recover
• Stigma in mental health
• Psychosis and recovery

The small choices in our life make us who we are today. Some are made subconsciously in childhood.

The most difficult family member and the adorable one both influence our lives in some way. We adopt some qualities of each one of them, which quality? Is an individual choice.  

As a child, I was fearful of my school teachers and grandparents. My granny was so controlling and manipulative that she could make the other feel guilty of her actions. Grandfather was a strict, disciplined yet balanced and fair person. My father was full of love, no-demands, calm, and self-content – a happy soul.

Papa was often taken for granted by everyone, even by the children, yet he was relaxed about it; whereas granny was popular among family, relatives, and friends. She used to get all the attention.

The choice I made subconsciously as a child was that “I will never manipulate”. I was straight forward, sometimes too sharp and brutal, which granny hated.

Everyone in the family used to please granny to keep her happy but I did the opposite; often got into argument and fight with her. I thought “If I am not doing anything wrong then why should I please her?”

As a result, she created resistance for me at every step. Deep inside I loved her and wanted her to love me back in the same way.  I became hard, rigid in my own way; the ego of being honest and truthful.

I felt it is not my cup of tea to control any relationships.  In frustration fighting on small things, I did not know how to handle the opposition due to my concept of perfection and reacted many times.

Later in life, this harder version of myself helped me to realize ‘enough’, this is due to my subtle restlessness and fear. I started meditating and felt the softness. Things started improving.

Another choice I made consciously changed my life.  My daughter Vrinda, was five years old. One evening at the swimming pool, after playing with her friend Molu, she came to me and asked, “Can we go to the coffee shop with Molu and her family to have snacks?”.

I was not on talking terms with her mother, we had fought lately.

I said, “Baby your friend did not ask me, neither her mother?”

Innocently Vrinda said to me, “But she asked me and I am asking you!”

For a few seconds everything stopped in me, I had two choices “Her happiness or my ego?”

I should make a gentle excuse to my daughter and divert her attention.

But I could not do so and, although it was painful, I said with some difficulty, “Ok baby I will go with you”

I became friends with her mother and family again. It might appear to be a trivial decision, but it reflected in my subsequent life. I experienced infinite love, crossing the human potential and its manifestation and the divine reciprocated.

It was difficult, full of conflicts, fluctuating, yet no part of life I regret. When I look back it was a beautiful and unbelievable journey. 

I feel there are no black and whites, the choice is between good and better, and who decides that? closing our eyes, inner peace will decide.