Violence in Our Society: Is all well with our Society and its Psyche?

Col. Rajeev Mannali, Chief Executive Officer, SUT Hospital, Pattom

Nowadays, newspapers and other media frequently report incidents that does not speak well of the psyche of our society. Cases of father killing his children, spouses murdering each other and such horrific incidents have become disturbingly common. What is even more alarming is that these incidents are increasingly reported in Kerala, raising concerns about what is happening to our society. Identifying the underlying factors and finding ways to address them is crucial in correcting this disturbing scenario.

One of the reasons is possibly the media, films, serials, entertainment shows and so on which are easily accessed by our society leading to highlighting of violence in multiple ways. We have to analyse and understand the root cause of this malaise and address it as soon as possible. The first thing is that we have to accept the fact that the mental health of our society needs immediate attention. Kerala’s health model is famous globally but surprisingly it does not cater to the mental health aspects. While we have several mental health centres across the state, there happens to be no accessible awareness or avenue for mental health correction at the bottom of the pyramid. We need to create a structure in which the mental health of the society is also addressed alongside the physical health.

Kerala has excellent grassroots level health care with ASHA workers providing care in Primary Healthcare Centres (PHC). Apart from ASHA workers, trained mental health staff must also be placed in the PHCs to undertake mental health programmes and help improve our society’s psychological well-being. Mental health must be accepted as an essential aspect of overall health and proper measures should be adopted to ensure mental wellbeing.

Like we have art, craft and physical education teachers at the school level, we need to incorporate psychological counsellors in our education system. Both aided and unaided schools need to have psychological counsellors who can identify problems and address them effectively. A counsellor for mental health can be posted in each school / college who can identify the children requiring psychological care and provide timely assistance where required. The government must take appropriate measures to make counselling accessible to the public at all levels of care.

ASHA workers can identify individuals who require counselling from their respective areas and refer them to professionals who will guide them in confidence. We need to adopt practical measures at grass root levels to combat crime and violence in the society through a structured system of mental health care.

Additionally, our culture has developed a new approach to violence. People see violence but do nothing; sometimes they even record it rather than preventing it or reporting it to the authorities. In other instances officials themselves resort to violence in public. The media has played a negative role by publicising violence making it look heroic to be violent. We need to correct this approach through positive actions.