Articles by Geeta Lal Sahai

It has been just over a month. The incident at an educational institute in NOIDA where a young boy killed his girlfriend, and then killed himself, sent shockwaves through the city. Unfortunately, this is no isolated case. Deaths by suicide or criminal acts involving young adults are being reported with alarming frequency. Incidents like the NOIDA one is just another stark reminder of the grave mental health issues among a high proportion of our adolescent and youth population. Especially post-COVID. It is by now well known that certain behavioural trends among children are tell-tale signs of underlying mental health issues…

“Mine was a happy family – an extremely romantic and loving husband and two adorable kids – a daughter and a son,” says 40-year-old Kiran (name changed) who works as Procurement Head in the Infra industry. “This is what the world saw in photos, on social media, and during outings. What no one knew was that my husband had Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia. He had been admitted to the psychiatric ward twice when he was at the peak of his career. I was working hard to make ends meet as bipolar disorder had made my husband go on an excessive…

"I know my identity is much more than bipolar disorder. It is just one part of my life”. Those are the words of US-based scientist Dr Yamini (name changed), who has continues to live her life with conviction, while living with Bipolar. On the occasion of World Bipolar Day (March 30), Citizen Matters interviewed Dr Yamini on how she has coped with life and her illness. And how others can learn to cope with similar conditions. Dr Yamini graduated in Engineering from one of India’s top Indian Engineering institutes, and moved to the US where she completed her PhD. She has…

When her relationship began to disintegrate, Sara 38, withdrew from the world and began to suffer from backaches and vertigo. “Now, I tend to cry onto my pillow,” says Sara. “There is no point in sharing anything with the person who will merely blame me for everything.” In recent years, there has been a sharp increase in the number of young and older adults knocking at the doors of psychologists and Happiness Coaches. And it is not just a big-city phenomenon. “I belong to Jaunpur, a small city in Uttar Pradesh, where I see people living in their shells,” says…

On November 8th, 28-year-old Aftab Ameen Poonawala was arrested for allegedly strangling his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar. They had had a violent argument. He cut her body into 35 pieces, kept them in a 300-litre fridge. Over the next few days Aftab disposed of the pieces at various places in Delhi’s Mehrauli forest area. While this incident — the Delhi Fridge case, as it is being referred to — has received relentless media focus, an increasing number of such gruesome crimes, often labelled crimes of passion, has been reported in the recent past. Family disputes and the breakdown of relationships…

Mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I didn’t even know the word, had never heard it and didn’t even know how to pronounce it. But Schizophrenia discreetly entered our lives way back in 2007-2008. I was a kid then: 7-8 years old. So it was tough to even know what was happening. She would randomly make stories. Once I returned from school after an examination and she said, “I have told your friends' mothers that their sons teased you.” I was simply aghast. Both my friends were a year older than me and lived nearby. No such incident had ever happened.…

The Singh family in Ghaziabad didn’t pay much attention when their 62-year-old father suddenly began to struggle to find the right words or remember the names of friends. He had loved travelling, but he stopped travelling and even avoided meeting friends and relatives. The family put it all down to age-related idiosyncrasy. Dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease wasn’t something that crossed their minds at that point. Mr Singh passed away within a span of one year. He had frontotemporal dementia.  “We thought that retirement and COVID lockdown had made him irritated and stress was the culprit,” says Mrs Nath, wife of…

This is the second of a two part series on why health insurance companies refuse to reimburse treatment cost of mental illness despite laws and insurance regulator guidelines saying they must treat mental illness on par with any other physical illness. The cost of regular psychiatric medication can be substantial. A person with a mental illness is rarely hospitalised. But there are no reimbursements for non-hospitalisation treatment, rehabilitation or outpatient services. "Why is there reluctance from insurers?" asks Vijay Nallawala, Founder of Bipolar India and Co-Founder of the Mental Health Support Foundation. "Unlike somebody with a cardiac problem, the treatment…

This is the first of a two part series on why health insurance companies refuse to reimburse treatment cost of mental illness, despite laws and insurance regulator guidelines saying they must treat mental illness on par with any other physical illness. "I bought a health insurance policy from a well-known insurance agency in 2014,” says V Naresh, 73, (name changed on request). “In January 2020, my 39-year-old son, who was diagnosed with a psychiatric illness, was admitted to rehab for 25 days. In March 2020, I put in a claim of around Rs. 2.75 lakh for the treatment, but it…

“I just want to run away; want to fly. I have been living here for the last 17 years**, waiting for my brother to come and take me. We have a bakery shop. He will come and take me back.” The raw words expressed by a woman with mental illness (or Persons with Mental Illness, PMIs), living in the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences, Delhi. She, and others like her, had been abandoned.  Some are rescued by NGOs while some get a new label, ‘homeless with mental illness’. Many a time, according to psychiatrist Dr Shashi Rai, family…