Skip to main content

Book Review: Shhh! Don’t Talk About Mental Health by Arjun Gupta

Before getting into ‘its and buts’ and ‘sneak peaks’, let us announce that ‘Shhh! Don’t Talk About Mental Health’ by Arjun Gupta is a powerful psychology book. It is not a self-help book. Mental health is the core of all sorrows and happiness in our lives. It is like the main engine of the train. But, sadly, in India and in many underdeveloped or developing countries, mental health is not taken in good spirit. It is discarded as something unusual and unwanted. This proposition, alone, makes the sufferer go wild and down and dull in all spheres of life.


So if you think that mental health is just a combination of two words and it can be gauzed and described in one simple definition, you have a wrong perception about it. It is way beyond and holds far-reaching effects on our minds and hearts. The book opens up with the story of Yashasvi, a young student in Bangalore, something unexpected has had happened with him and he is down in the alley of critical depression. He comes out of that is another finding and revelations, however, in between lies the crux to win over coldly-stabbing mental health issues, like depression.

Though being a non-fiction and offbeat from the self-help genre, the book still sounds interesting and charming. This is because of the proper segmentation of the topics and chapter after chapter new findings and discoveries will not stop bemusing. While reading and understanding the context, you will have that feeling of being educated in the mental health field, and there is a lot left to win in life.

Section I – From Possessed to Depressed – is the best section in the book. It takes us into the realms of history of many countries where we see how, over the years, mental health issues have been evolved. The story is not the same everywhere, some sufferers were seen as an evil spirit and possessed by natural powers, people were chained and tortured. Even to contribute in this field, some people have suffered it first-hand before helping others.

In the following sections, the author’s stance begins taking practical approaches. We come to know about expectations, environment, stigma, behavioral pattern that decide the fate of a person suffering from mental illness. Stigma: A Silent Weapon is the most effective topic in the book, even if this chapter puts out into blogs, we are sure that it can help millions of depressed people come out of their abysmal zone.

The kind of research, data, stats, and credibility the author has instilled in the narrative is way par excellence. One needs to be attentive and extremely focused to bind everything into a readable entity. 

What happens to Yashasvi, in the end, is left to you – you need to discover what helped him or what fate did he succumb? Overall, it’s a bit dark but a good book, and can be referred from time to time, by teachers, patients, psychiatrists, and many more people grappling in life due to mental health issues.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should ...
68 comments
Read more

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike.  This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversatio...
64 comments
Read more

Character Sketch of Binya from ‘The Blue Umbrella’ by Ruskin Bond

The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond is a popular children’s story. It features Binya as the main character, though there are other important characters as well, but the story revolves around Binya and her little beautiful umbrella. The story is widely popular among children, thus it has also been included in the schools’ syllabus all across the country. Since it is often taught in the school, thus the character sketch of Binya is often demanded by students from year to year. Character Sketch of Binya from The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond Binya is the main character of the novel ‘The Blue Umbrella’ by Ruskin Bond. Her full name is Binyadevi. As in the hills or anywhere in India it is a kind of trend to call children with their short nicknames. Binya’s elder brother’s name is Bijju, whereas his real name is Vijay. Binya aged eleven is a hilly girl. She lives with her small family in the hills of Garhwal. Her father died when she was two years of age. For sustenance, the...
41 comments
Read more