Quoting the same survey, it said that the prevalence of mental morbidity was higher in urban metro regions (13.5 per cent) as compared to rural areas (6.9 per cent) and urban non-metro areas (4.3 per cent), it added.
The fundamental issue of the lack of awareness about mental health and the stigma surrounding it can render any sincerely crafted programme unfeasible, it added.
“Hence, there is a need to bring about a paradigm shift and utilise a bottom-up, whole-of-community approach in addressing mental health. Breaking the stigma starts with taking cognisance of the natural human tendency to accept physical ailments and seeking treatment for the same while being in denial about mental health issues,” it said.
To an extent, the denial is an outcome of fear about social attitudes and social acceptance after one ‘comes out’ with mental health issues, it said.
“For public health officials, tackling mental health requires acknowledging and addressing this reluctance. Mental health issues drag down productivity more widely in the ecosystem than individuals’ physical health issues. Hence, paying attention to mental health issues in society is both a health and an economic imperative,” the document noted.
It also linked the increase in mental health issues in children and adolescents with the overuse of the internet and, specifically, social media.
Unrestrained and unsupervised use of the internet by children can culminate into a range of problems, from the more prevalent obsessive consumption of social media or ‘doom scrolling’ to severe ones such as cyberbullying.
In the Indian context, the rising usage of the Internet on mental health has been indicated by a 2021 study on ‘Effects of using Mobile Phones and other devices with Internet accessibility by children’ by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, (NCPCR) according to which 23.8 per cent of children use smartphones while they are in bed, and 37.2 per cent of children experience reduced levels of concentration due to smartphone use, it highlighted.