 or lingo, whatever vocabulary, whatever words you want to use has come up in the last 20 years in the world. And one of them the most popular is stress, you have heard of this word all of you. And around this stress, there are lot of other words which have come up, things which were not known to people like depression, like mental disorders. And on the periphery has emerged a whole billion dollar industry to keep people mentally healthy. These are pharmaceuticals, these are self-help books, self-help gurus and what not. It is a huge industry. How is this supported? This is supported by some data, World Health Organization says by 2020, every fourth Indian will be taking anti-depressant or anti-anxiety drug. This is what they said about 10 years back. Last year they said that 36 percent of Indians are depressed. And believe me, anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs are the most prescribed drugs. Some people say depression is the number two killer in the world. Now much all this mess, you really do not know what is the truth. So, it is worthwhile to examine that what is mental health, because obviously what do we all strive for? We strive for being healthy and being mentally healthy. But if 36 percent people in a country are not well, it is a very very sinister sign. So, I think it is not only a prerogative of psychiatrist and mental health professionals and psychologists and the policy makers and the pharmaceutical people to know what is the truth, it is a prerogative of everybody to know it. This is the truth and fact and statistics, if you believe statistics is truth, then this is the truth. But on the other hand, there is a whole lot of confusion in it, even in the basic definitions. So, what we are going to do in next half an hour, 40 minutes, you just trace it back and let us see what happens, what is mental health and what is mental illness and how do mental health professionals perceive it, how does the society perceive it, because obviously nothing works in isolation, none of them is an island. So, it has to be a interactive thing. So, let us go back, let us go back to the farthest point in history, the first sign where we know what we call, you know the common word which is used in India for mental illness, what is it? Pagal, Pagal, Pagalka translation is mad. So, I am not talking about mental illness, that we will see, what a mental illness is a word which came in the last 50 years, curtsy us and curtsy people, activists and all that. But what were being used in literature and history was a word called madness. Let us go back to the first sign of madness, do you know the man here, two men, who are they? Lord Krishna and Arjun, imagine that this is not mythology, this was a story, there was a war, there was a man called Arjun, who was the best warrior of that time. The whole war hinged on that man's performance, and he goes there and he says, a lot fight, what was he undergoing and what did Krishna do then, what did he do? There was a, even if you go further, you will find more stories, but let us take this as a starting point, because some people say it is mythology and even if it was true, it was happening at the beginning of this 5000 years of history, we know. We do not know the history of 2 lakh years, we know the history of 5000 years. So, this man suddenly went into what, what happened to him? It has happened to all of us at some point of the time, exams, entrance, competitions, depression, it was one acute depression, and if you read this text called Gita, read the first chapter, you will know what was happening. Arjun was saying, my hands are going loose, they are shivering and I am sweating and my mind is going blank, I am getting dizzy, all the sign of an acute panic attack. You listen to somebody who is having a panic attack or acute depression, somebody wants to run away, we will tell you the same story. So, that was the first described acute attack of depression and the first psychotherapy in action. Krishna was not, Krishna did not take him, come to my chamber, let us sit across the table in the couch and talk. He said boss, let us do psychotherapy here itself and he did a wonderful psychotherapy. That psychotherapy still remains the best, but if there was a madness, that was madness, there was a method in it. That madness was not very deviant, it was in a war field, you are being asked to fight, you do not fight, you get into certain physical symptoms, your mind just gives way and there is a man luckily who is sitting in front of your chariot who turns back and says, not everybody is so lucky, not all Arjuns have Krishna there by this side. So, that means it was well known even then, people did not call it madness, but if all these symptoms are put into a modern classificatory system, Arjun will get a label, like we are used to giving labels to everything. Read this, let us come to Greece, Socrates is one of the oldest philosopher. I am just telling you what has been the viewpoint over time towards what we call madness today. So, acute depression was not called a madness, Krishna told him to fight that this is a fine temporary thing, it will go off. Panic attacks still remain the same by the way. Socrates said that madness is nothing to be ashamed of, all great things come out of madness. Madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human and you all have heard the word called is a very thin line between a genius and a madman. Some people remain on the both sides of it, one has to choose which side and this is people prefer madness, if at all there is anything called madness. So, there was a whole lot of people who took pride in the madness. Socrates, Gibran, Shakespeare has written everywhere, you see Hamlet, you see Macbeth, everybody. So, the big minds of all time, the literature, the philosophers, they never thought that madness is something which should be thrown out. They actually loved their madness, which went psychotic. In our times, Sadad Hassan Manto, the greatest Urdu short story teller actually had psychotic breakdown, Vincent Van Gaum, John Nash. Now, what has happened to the madness and over time is that these people started getting labels and once society started giving them labels, then this whole concept of psychiatry and mental health and everything started. Let us see what are the labels they received. First of all, all these people were considered. Once they started thinking about this as a illness, then all labels started. We are very human beings are very fond of giving labels. They cannot live without labels because labels give a certain framework. Labels give certainty. If we do not label anything, it is all free. Then what is the problem? The problem is uncertainty that will keep creating anxiety. Everybody wants to have a certain mindset to know the future, what the next step is going to be. If you are just send out in the open and say there is no label, you will not do what you want. It will be a very, very discomforting and disturbing experience for most people unless you have really trained your mind to be like that into free flowing area, but that is very difficult. These are some of the labels. You all have heard this. Insane. We still use this word. We do not use this word in psychiatry anymore. Insane is against what? Sanity. Sanity. Is sanity defined? I am just throwing some questions. Keep thinking. When sanity is not defined, you are still calling somebody insane. It does not matter. Lunatic. What is this word called lunatic? Lunatic asylums. We do not use this word. Lunatic asylum came from what? Lunatics came from what? He is a raving lunatic. People used to say about Hitler for raving lunatic. Lunatic came from what? There was an observation by some great people that with the lunar cycle, some people used to become disturbed on a full moon day. They almost equated it with like sea tides. There will be 2, 3 days in a month where these people will be disturbed. At that time, there were no other biological explanations. So, what they thought was that because it is a full moon. They did not even know magnetic field at that time. They just knew that it is a full moon and this is a disturbance of this corroborative research. We corroborate a set of facts with the other facts. It is still the hardcore research method in psychiatry today also. So, lot of research which goes into psychiatry and mental health and all that. Sometimes, you will really wonder what is happening. Nothing is happening. It is the same lunatic thing going on. Full moon illness. We find it here. It is the same lunatic thing going on. We find that 5 people who walk on the, who put the first left foot forward fall. I am just throwing it. Somebody may really find it. You should walk with your right foot forward first because you put left foot, chances are you will stumble. So, this type of thing corroboration. It may not be the best way, but that is the only way. Abnormal against what? Abnormal. Big question. Big question. Mad, we all know. In some societies, these mad people were not considered as mad. They were actually considered as mad. Have we evolved from that? Yes or no? I do not think we have evolved. If you just look what was happening in our country few days back in Delhi, we are really not sure those people were mad or bad. One of them died also. How to decide? Then their systems evolved. There are certain things with the intent. If there is an intent, you call them bad. When there is no intent, you call them mad. So, poor man will lift up a bread from a shop and a rich man will lift up a watch from a shopping mall. Who is mad and who is bad? Have you ever thought? Lot of film stars were caught in the way, lifting up watches and putting in their purse. But a person who steals a bread, who does not have food. Can you decide? It is very difficult. Really I am telling you. Why I am telling you all this? It is very easy to tell you how we decide this is mentally ill and this is one of you may come and say I am having this. Now, if I am a good psychiatrist, I will not take time and put a label on you and that is not the best way. It is very difficult to decide. What is what? Because a person who lifts up, a rich person who lifts up is called a kleptomaniac. They have a compulsive stealing. This person who lifts up is hungry. Act is the same in different context, but the context decides. Now, this is the big thing, context. But do we work on context is the question. The same panic attack for Arjun was very difficult. But a panic attack while you are coming out of the lift is a different context. There is no big deal in coming out of the lift or going into the lift. But you go into the lift and you have a panic attack. Now, after all this lunatic asylum and activism and some people thought that correctly that why denigrate people by telling them that you are lunatic or inferior or whatever. We started calling it mentally ill. Now, there is a whole lot of activism which is going on which I do not know what will come out in next 20 years. Let me give you an example. All these children who have deficits like mental retardation and all these are all diagnoses, but people have stopped calling them as deficient children or deficit or sub normal. They have started calling them mentally challenged. I do not even call them mentally challenged. What is the problem? But because I will tell you why we call them, we will discover. Why have we started calling people like this and that and what is normal? Can anybody define? What is normal? Statistic which are shown by majority of the population. So, is normal what is statistically normal? Statistically normal. Any other definition? Last lecture I had a sentence which was a very crazy sentence. Lot of people will kill me for that. If I said normal sanity is insanity. Normal sanity is insanity because most of the time you are trying to do what others do. So, if you are trying to do what others do you are insane or sane. It is a million dollar question. I am not telling this here. I tell it to psychiatrist also. They may outcast me and never bother. Think over. I will throw more questions today than answers, but you because you are going to run this country someday you will be making policies and all that. So, if you keep this thorn in your head someday you may really modify things. I agree your definition. This is what we are taught. Let me take an example of intelligence. You all know what IQ test is? IQ test is the mental age upon your real age into 100. Agreed? This is just a number. If I say you have a IQ of 140 and I have a IQ of 70 what does it mean? What does it mean? Nothing. Does it mean anything? You have your life. I have my life. You may make a rocket. I may make a chai. How does it matter? How does it matter? It does not matter, but you know what happened at the beginning of 20th century and even before that 19th. This drama was used to control people. Psychiatry has always been a big tool in the hands of politicians, psychologists also. This tool was used because you see this is the bell shaped curve. One is standard deviation, two is standard deviation. All population comes into that. So, normal is in between than less and less. This was being used by some people to control the black population. That is how they came to it. They said they have less IQ. Like Dalits were told they have a less IQ. Who said there is a less IQ? When you do this test, if I am not paying attention to it or if I am anxious, I will perform badly and they are heavily verbally loaded tests which were done initially. How will you verbally loaded? If I have not been given a chance to develop my language, I will not perform well. After sometime, after 50 years of all this drama, some people started devising performance tests. If you verbally are not good, let us perform. Now anyway, it has evolved to more or less sensible level. IQ tests are normally now used for certification. In my last 10 years, I have not bothered to get IQ tests done for anybody. Even when they say it is mental retardation, I say it is damage. Do not bother. What will you do? The moment you get IQ test, you know what happens. This is the source of all drama. The source of the drama is that if I do IQ test and I tell you that you have IQ of 80, this information will be in your head for life. The moment I tell you IQ is 80 and Albert Einstein's IQ was 160. You start comparing. You unnecessarily get into a loop of inferiority complex. I cannot do this, I cannot do that and this then that drama and what will happen is that you may have a potential, but it will not work. I am just telling you an isolation about intelligence. So, now what the theory has changed? They say there is a guy called Gardner. Gardner said you why are you bothered about IQ and all that. There are seven types of intelligence and there are many more type of intelligences we do not know. Some people are motor intelligence. Motor intelligence means they can use their body very well. Dancers, athletes, cricketers. Some people use their music intelligence. All great musicians. The music sense is wonderful. You may have your visual intelligence much more developed than your verbal intelligence or you may have a verbal even interpersonal and interpersonal. Some people have a very good skill of solving others problem. Politicians, they have such good interpersonal skills. Some people have very good interpersonal skills. So, there are a lot of type of intelligences. Why do you have to have a unitary construct of single IQ? It means that in somebody one type of intelligence may be much more developed than the other type. That is what is being understood now. We just find and this is all the result of all this churning which has gone in last 40 years in our heads because we also do not like all that. Why blame people? Why tell them this and that? But anyway that is how the world goes. So, if it can happen in intelligence it can happen in lot of other things. Your own information taken out of context can be used to label. These are the confusion which actually prevailed in the minds of people who have made classificatory system. And I will just bring you to 2013 what is happening. We are amidst the huge crisis right now. The whole psychiatric. So, what is mental health? This is a definition by WHO. It is not just the importance of mental disorder. It is defined as a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully and is able to make a contribution to her or his community. What it does not talk about? It does not talk about what? When and how? We all have, if you apply this definition on to yourself, there would have been occasions when we would have not been mentally healthy. Because there are times when we are not realizing our potential. There are times when we are not able to cope with normal stress. We all go crazy if at all there is something called crazy. But does that? Yeah. These definition looks more or less like that they are taking human means as robots, like a machine. Absolutely. WHO is being paid dollars for all this. See, the problem is that people, that is what I am saying. Why I am challenging this whole concept? I am not challenging in this lecture, but most of us are challenging this concept because these are definitions which have been made putting into a larger frame of life, whatever dimensions life is in. And therein lies the whole problem because we have not evolved a perfect system of their reasons for it. And as we go along, you will know why this definition has been evolved. Now, this is mental disorders. If that is mental health, this is mental disorder. It comprises a broad range of problems with different symptoms. However, they are generally characterized by some combination of abnormal thoughts, emotions, behavior and relationship with others. By these two definitions, all of us at some point of time would fall into being mentally ill, but it is not so. Because once we started defining mental illness, you also put a tag of duration on to it. Like if you are sad for half a day, we would not call it depression actually. You have to be persistently sad for two weeks. Similarly, if you have a single panic attack, you do not treat it. You have four panic attacks in a month, then you treat it. Or if you have such symptoms for one month, then you are called this. So, that once in a while you have all this, it will not qualify for a mental illness. How we reach this duration and all is again, we will see when we talk of DSM. So, when we do not know what is normal, we do not know what is abnormal. So, how do we decide? Are these people who are mentally ill different from us? Are the people who are born from some other species? Are they different? Have they descended from Mars? No. They are like us. If you remove the mental illness, aren't they like us? They are. That means we are no different. Big question. So, there are two things which we still do not know. Whether mental illness is on a continuum from healthy, normal. Two, there is a little problem. You have adjustment reaction. You dished by your well friend, boyfriend. You go into a TZ photo in two weeks. It is an adjustment reaction. You bounce back. 100 percent of the people who face such situation will go into depression. So, it is a normal reaction. So, somewhere between that and then to a minor illness and then to, is it this from mental health illness that all of us have a potential of what a fully mentally ill person has. We may be at 10. He may be at 100. Or is it discrete? Are the different people? Are the people who are not like us? But if they are not like us, they are in our families. Even if they are not like us, they are in our families. Are those families different where there is a mental illness? Or are they in our families? I guess they are in our families. Then there are no stigmatized separate families that this family will have mental illness and this will not. Because there is such a widespread gene pool which is in all of us. 90 percent genes are the same from our African grand, grand, grand, grand, grand mother. They are the same genes. So, when the gene pool is the same, then the tendency to have illness is the same. And this is something which is very concrete. So, who is ill? Statistics. Who is this man? Was he ill? Was he ill? When whole England was in lower courts, this guy was moving with a shawl in Chappalp. Not even a sock. And you know this famous story. He went to meet King George in his… This is slightly underdressed. When he is slightly overdressed, he has a shawl. And he walks up and he says, Mr. Gandhi, somebody say, Mr. Gandhi, do not you think you are underdressed to meet the King? He said, does not matter. He is overdressed for me. Was he ill? He is outside the statistics. He is out of even that two standard deviation. The last tip of something is lying there. This is very important to think over sometime in your life. Can mental health be defined by a unitary construct? Let me give you an example. I give you one example of stealing. The other example is if suddenly one of us removes our clothes and starts wandering on the street with just one leaf to cover your below waist, what will happen? In this campus, I will tell you the destination. The destination is health center. Counseling office, health center, me or Sanjay Mahendra or mental hospital. You go to a place called Bhastha in MP. They still live like that. Forget Bhastha. Ten years back, I used to drive from Agra to Jaipur near Bharatpur, where there is a bird sanctuary. Women in the whole two, three villages, they do not wear anything on the torso. Ten years back. In India, I am telling Bharatpur. Yes, next door. But if Raki Saman does it in Mumbai, the whole sensor ward will start. What is an elderly? What is an elderly? What is mental health? Somebody doing a poor man doing an obscene gesture on the street. Is mentally ill? We always accept. What about the item number songs in Bollywood? Are they mentally an elderly or elderly? If they are mentally an elderly and we pay 2 crore rupees to them, then there is something wrong with us. So, this is very, very difficult to define. In a western culture, touching feet, they will not accept it. In our culture, we do not accept. If we do not touch feet, we will still get a slap. I still am 48 and I hear from my 70-year-old uncle, you kids have a problem, but he grown up beyond your boots. This is what happens. What I am trying to tell you, lot of mental health issues are context driven. It is a fallacy on the part of people who diagnose. It is a fallacy on the part of people who treat to call everything illness. Like for me, if you ask me, if somebody is broken up in an love affair, I would not call them mentally ill and depression and all. I know this should happen because this happened to Gallim. He wrote a lot of poetry. You do not go and treat Gallim. Gallim was depressed. He was alcohol dependent. Had you treated him, what would this poetry would have come out? John Nash was called to World Secretary Association Madrid conference and he stood up and he said, thanks. You treated me, but please do not take away my creativity. If my illness is my creativity, let it be. I have seen John Nash also. Yes. And once John Nash was posted in the hospital, one of his mathematicians friend came and told him, above all you, a person who is dedicated his life to logic and perfection could say that you are seeing those sort of visions. John Nash only said, the mathematics comes to me in the same way as those visions. Absolutely. So, he was a Ramon. Yes. Everything in dreams. Everything. All big things come there. So, Gretis said it. It is a gift from God. So, again I am saying, do not get mad, but what I am trying to say is all context-driven. You go to nude camps, they live in a certain area. You go and tell them that, why are you doing this? They will come and say, why are you doing this? Osho, you know Rajnish, he was asked, why are you keeping a beard? He said, I am living naturally. You are living unnaturally by shaving. So, what I am trying to tell you that this is, there is no answer to it. It is blood. So, on what basis do we decide somebody is, if it is contractive and if it is mentally healthy, if after taking dope you are supposed to go crazy and what is abnormal in that? Because cannabis use is very common in villages and all that. In your hostel it is not. In eastern UP villages, the mothers used to give bit of morphine to the kids, so that they sleep in the daytime and they can go and work in the field. Today, if you tell this, so that means it is time and space and everything decides what is healthy, but we are still there. We have buttered our protein and we will decide. So, what are the facts? Let us see. I am telling you the normal facts. Everybody has a unique blueprint of personality, conditioned by nature. No confusion in this. Stress is inherent to living. If you do not have stress, you cannot perform. But, stress again is good stress and bad stress. What we make of stress determines quality of life. Simply, there is some stress, your performance improves. The stress goes beyond a point, your performance drops. Between this confusion, this whole billion dollar industry is making money. Everybody, all the gurus, all self-help things, all yoga, Barack Obama has said that yoga is a good spiritual exercise and it is nobody's copyright and all that. So, what I am saying that, what is inherent in being given to you by nature by a simple mathematics called a Yerkes-Dotson curve, simple mathematics. Stress till a certain level will improve your performance. Beyond a certain level, it will fall, simple. There is a good stress, there is a bad stress. What you make out of your life determines your quality of life and you do not need rocket science to understand this. Simple. What are the challenges to living in normal life? Cognitive aberration. We all have, you know, understand cognitive aberrations. We all have faulty logics. Cognitive aberrations come by selective abstraction. You have given a set of data. You will see what you want and then get worried. Like you are being told that you will, small kids or school kids, remote card. The report card is the huge selective abstraction. What is the report card? Nobody knows. But then what do you abstract? The report card is determining my passing. From here starts the problem. This thing becomes more important. Knowledge gains a second hand. This is cognitive aberration. And unfortunately, cognitive aberration is present not in kids. They do not know all this. It is present in the teachers and parents. Minimization and magnification. What should not be paid attention to? We bother too much about it. Right? And what should be paid attention? We do not bother. This is called minimize. So, these are normal things, generalizations. The specific thing is generally all hall one drinks alcohol. What? 30 percent would drink and make Angama. But those 30 percent can ride over. Politicians. Politicians. This is a typical thing we do, cognitive aberration. All politicians are bad. You cannot do this, please. For God's sake. 540 MPs cannot be bad. They are human beings like us. It will be hardly 40 or 60 or 100 at max. It will be real corrupt and bad. These 100 becomes a huge number. Rest 400 poor people who are working. This is generalization. Actually, this is generalization. Everybody is bad. This induces anxiety. Suppression of emotion and thought. We all do this. We have to. Otherwise, we would not survive. What are the sources of all this trouble to normal people? Let us look at the normal problems. Then, we will see whether we turn into mentally self. We are a problem to ourselves. There is no bigger problem in earth than me. There is a great poet, Surdas. You heard of Surdas? He used to write, Pratyan Krishna. He wrote that you are God. Till this date, you have been saving all the very minor puppies. Save me. Then, I will know you are a God. This is in the mind of human beings from ages. Work. Work is a problem always. You have to work to earn your livelihood. It is not a good way of living. Nevertheless, relationships are meant for problems. Sometimes, support.