 Welcome to NewsClick. While we discuss the situation in Kashmir from highlighting a variety of issues which concerns judiciary, restrictions, communication and all, there is one area that has received very little attention until an article appeared in Kashmir Times written by Dr. Shobna Sompar. Dr. Shobna Sompar who is with us today is a clinical, practicing clinical psychologist and a psychotherapist. She has helped in setting up IIT Delhi's counseling services. She has helped prepare the curriculum for Tribhuvan University for their psychology program. But for us it is very interesting to know that she has also done in the last two decades a lot of work in Kashmir and on Kashmir related to people in Kashmir and the issues concerning that. She has been part of many workshops, she has conducted many workshops. Apart from that she has done a detailed study of psychological study of ex militants. Welcome to NewsClick, Shobna. Thank you. Shobna, let me begin by asking in this, the only piece that we have noticed in recent times after all the turbulence that people are experiencing in Kashmir that has come on the mental health situation of the people appeared in Kashmir Times where actually you draw attention to a very serious issues. You refer in that article to a 2015 study by Doctors Without Frontiers and the Department of Psychology of Kashmir University which claims that up to 45% of the adult population that is nearly 2 million adults in Kashmir suffer from some psychological problem, stress. I like you to elaborate on that and what does it mean when you already have such an existing situation? What does it mean then to subject the same people to even greater amount of restrictions or rather repression? Let us call it what it is. But first let us underline the enormity of the mental health problem. The 2015 study that you referred to was conducted jointly by Doctors Without Borders, Psychology Department of Kashmir University and the Institute of Mental Health in Srinagar. All three of them collaborated in this and it is an extensive study covering 10 districts of the Kashmir Valley. I think about 5,600 households were covered and they did random sampling so it is a methodologically, it is a very rigorous study and the findings are really alarming because to say that 45% of your adult population is suffering psychological distress of which nearly 20% are suffering from what could be post-traumatic stress disorder. About 35% or so are anxiety related and about 41% are suffering from depression. This is a very serious thing, it is half the population. Also I think the significant thing here is that they have attempted to also correlate it with trauma by actually studying how many traumatic events have these people also suffered. So there is a clear linkage between the fact that whatever they are suffering, the mental distress is not just some individual phenomenon that happens, people suffer from. But it is really related to traumatic psychosocial context. So that is a very important. What does it mean? I mean for an ordinary person this is like Greek. What does it mean? It means that these people have gone through life events that are extreme where the survival may be threatened which have evoked extreme fear, extreme helplessness and repeated such events. So when they have assessed how many such traumatic events these people may have faced, it is like about 7.5 per which is very, very high in that context. What is an average that as a clinical psychologist? I don't know what the exact thing it is but it is much less. It is probably in the region of one or two. I mean where do you have so many traumatic life events happening and that also which push you into extremes of emotion, especially emotions of fear and lack of safety. They are life threatening, either actually physical life or your psychological life. Given that people were already subjected to, I mean they were experiencing this in the course of the last 30 years. When you inflict on the same population, even a greater regime of control and victimization so to say, what happens to them then? I mean if you are already sick and you are suffering you are down, what happens then if you are the traumatic experience? So there is no experience of normality. So speaking as a person who actually does psychotherapy for a living, one of the things that I find is that when people are suffering from some anxiety, some fearfulness, their capacity to reflect goes because you are only in survival mode. So your actions and decisions that lead to what shall I do are not governed by a reflective capacity to go in the line of most constructive action. They are sometimes simply out of that emotional motivation that is happening at that particular time. So one of the things that can happen is actually two extremes. One is a complete cowering into complete silence and subjugation but underneath the silence and subjugation would be a lot of other stuff simmering. So you have like when you look at populations in captivity and the qualities of populations in captivity, whether it is prisoners, whether it is psychological captivity like you have a battered situation of domestic abuse and a battered woman or you have a sexually abusive situation. So across all is a sense of there is coercive control and subjugation and a great fear. And that situation creates a kind of both constraint but so there is maybe what is manifest is quietness and silence and lack of protest and even maybe in order to survive a kind of a bartering no no but underneath that there is always something that similar so there will be outbursts of one kind or the other. So what are the implications then you refer to outbursts? So the implications are you and your article in fact you refer to something even more. So the implications are really of the prospect of more violence at some point. It cannot but be so because where are all those feelings of terror which is now coupled with humiliation and subjugation and shame yeah and helplessness where is that going to go? It can it will it may be suppressed for a while but it will it will emerge in some form or the other. So you fear that there would be a rise in violence and offer? I think there is likely to be no and I think one of the things that I also draw attention to in my piece is that this kind of a context it actually destroys something that we all take for granted in terms of what is it that makes me feel secure for instance you know at a very implicit background level it's simply that I don't think that my people around me are out to harm me. I think that I can you know trust on the goodwill of the fellow here and you know I mean we take this so much for granted we take so much for granted this implicit sense of trust and goodwill. This is just not there in these contexts it's destroyed. So you have a people who become distrustful and suspicious and they reason to be right watchful vigilant constantly feeling under threat. No and this is a result of the control and the captivity of kind that is there being subjected to. One question that startles me and I have to bothering me also is that mental health it's not as if mental health issue in Kashmir has not been flagged earlier it has been. What I find very disturbing is the fact that it hasn't received in the present context where we are in the 47 day of restrictions there is no concern for the mental of what happens to people when they're subjected to this level of control. So Gautam you know there's a it's a two-edged sword is what I think. I think on one hand when you draw attention to mental health and you begin to talk about it in terms of PTSD and clinical depression and anxiety you move into a health frame. It becomes a medical problem and it loses the fact that this suffering is anchored in their socio-political reality. So now it becomes a matter for psychologists to go and concern themselves with and counsellors it should not I mean they the counsellors are only addressing the they're only dressing the wounds no no it's the rest of society that has to look at the social suffering in which they are complicit no so that's why I say it's double-edged because when you give it that mental health and of course the other thing that I want to emphasize is that when you look at the it's causing this kind of mental health problem actually that's only the tip of the iceberg because the damage that is being done to the young people who have not the children for instance they're going about playing and doing this that and the other and you say oh how resilient and so on but what is it actually doing to them and what is going to be the long term. In fact when you talk about trauma now the conversation about trauma in in professional circles is a distinction between what they call developmental trauma which is what happens with children who have suffered adversity of any kind and adult onset trauma which is you know I go through a tsunami or I have an accident so right the there is the impact is very different because for for children the trauma impacts their very development because they're not fully formed so it enters there they embody the trauma in their old development they their ways of developing and becoming people carry ways of coping with extremity so they develop also know so this is what we see all the time when we deal with adult patients who have actually suffered say sexual abuse physical abuse or neglect or any other form of long-term childhood adversity right so we are not looking at that because they are not falling into your little categories no so you are trying to say that the reason I mean they need not be too much of focus on mental health because it'll distract I think the yeah I think the focus on mental health has to broaden outside just psychiatric diagnosis which only identify the tip of the iceberg but the kind of psychological damage that is happening to society as a whole and to various sections of that society they don't fall into clear-cut psychiatric diagnosis so that's again a problem of looking at it through a strict mental health model I would look at it more in terms of a psychological psychosocial well-being model and actually the psychosocial well-being model is a model that now increasingly people who work in areas where there is been long-term long-term conflict Kashmir or even if not that it has helped much because the conditions have remained or rather deteriorated so the level of restrictions and the level of I mean subjecting them to a greater restrictions of variety of various forms has been a part of their life but there is one thing that strikes me I mean while what it's interesting what you have said because that's that's important to keep in mind so that the the real issues don't get sidetracked how is it I mean you have written elsewhere too that about two things that I want to flag that people make a distinction there is in all in most of the studies or your encounters at a popular level you found that people were not necessarily talking in the bipolar language of violence versus non-violence but there were more inclined towards legitimate good violence versus illegitimate bad violence keeping this distinction in mind and also what you said in the introduction to the book that you and Nehru Convert have brought out on in memory of Dr. Vimla Lal you make a very important point there also about prejudice that it's with the others a person belonging to another social group ceases to be a person I mean that's how I read it that it ceases to be a person and therefore when legitimate violence is applied against somebody who's already seen as an adversary or a suspicious character or an enemy then everything goes my question is this right now the kind of cruel apathy and indifference that is being displayed where people accept that yes what is being done to Kashmir is all right it's only in their best interest etc etc I mean that's the best case scenario that they paint but what does it say about those who themselves remain so cruelly indifferent to conditions which you and I would not find acceptable we even put 24 hours here they've been subjected for 30 years and at the end of it now they've been made captive entire it's not just one or two or three or hundred individuals it's an entire people what does it say about ourselves so this is really entering into very complicated territory and it's an area I think where a lot more research has to be done and has not been done which is actually of how is it that we numb ourselves to the suffering of others yeah there is no compassion there is no psychologists speak of it often in terms of one mechanism which is that of dissociation right dissociation we all do dissociation I do dissociation for instance when I'm at the traffic light and a little kid comes begging for money or whatever right yeah but this year talking about a staggering but we need to consider that these are processes that we all utilize and some people utilize it more in certain situations but the mechanisms are similar I just want to highlight the fact that there is a way in which dissociation is a normal human faculty to ward off to ward off what we can't bear to see okay yeah the question here but yeah so here the question is how are you warding off what is staring you in the face one is that you're not looking at it how many people have read this article let me share with you that I shared some thoughts on a psychologist forum right about mental health and it was in the context of this very study that we speak of this radio silence nobody responded so one way of dissociating is simply denial I turn my head away because I can't I cannot deal with it no here the case is different it's not just denial it's much more than that it's step beyond where they endorse what is being done there is popular support so so support and that shows a level of cruelty and you remarked also somewhere else in your in your one of your studies about the authoritarian personality yeah among those who have very prejudice strong prejudice display a strong authoritarian personality so is it that that is that we are revealing that is that what is being revealed about us as a society I don't think one can make a generalizations I think surely as in all societies there will be some among us who have strong authoritarian personalities and some who don't but the I think what we are looking at here and maybe it's a more useful way of looking at it is the dynamics of bystanders you know bystanders in any context what is it that makes bystanders not intervene or not pay attention so dissociation is one of them the other is that if in some ways you feel that you have no let's get that one here if you feel that you have you are in some way complicit simply by the fact that I identify with this group to which I belong so I belong to this community right this is the community that is propagating this right right somewhere my we that I belong to this larger collective makes me conflicted it makes me conflicted in the direction of I feel terrible about what's happening but how can I because I also feel ashamed and guilty right so here we come to where shame and guilt can either make a person move forward in a reparative mode acknowledging complicity seeking help seeking redress and all of that or make you move back into a further hardened polarized position by making the defenses the dissociation the denial stronger and by blaming the victim right so this is my question yeah I come back again to my question that still doesn't how is it that the opinion makers and decision makers despite 47 days of this in a place where for 30 years people have been subjected to various traumatic experiences a series of it the Indian society that is claiming them believes that all that is being done is all right so here we have to make a distinction no between the people who are making the policy makers and the people who is who is the audience for which the policy makers are doing what they're doing they're not doing it for the Kashmiris they're doing it for the rest of us yes so here is where we need to understand so when the leaders do this for their own agendas whatever it might be what is it that the bystander the audience is feeling and that's why I'm trying to emphasize that the bystander is torn they may come forward and say yeah this is terrible and they have to be brave because they face flak they whatever right or they retreat into a further you know akra who are sort of position of no it's them they deserve it whatever right so that that is it but I I think you have to make a distinction that this is not being done what can what ought to be done I mean is there something that I think in a democracy it is that we we we get the bystanders to to get these other these other thoughts and ideas about what is going on not this one single narrative and to be able to question and to acknowledge you know how does one acknowledge shame how does one acknowledge guilt no we don't it's not easy I know that in the clinic I know working with individual that that is really a very crucial threshold you know which either the person is able to acknowledge it and it's really freeing when they're able to acknowledge and make reparation for whatever right or if they get into a rant about no they are bad my father did this my daughter and all of that you know so so somewhere the bystander's complicity has to be highlighted not in a blaming way but in a in a compassionate way thank you shobana because it's it's important to keep in mind what you said was then that we we are responsible now for reaching out to the bystanders and bringing this also into our conversations when we talk about kashmir because it's not something that should be just left to the experts that this is something where a widening of conversation between people is important thank you shobana thank you this was we like to have you again some other time thank you for today if you have any feedback any question any comment do write to us and keep watching news click