Young people want to access mental health treatment, several mental health professionals in the city said.
However, many times they cannot do so because their parents refuse to accept their condition and the young are unable to pay for the treatment.
October is mental health month and organisations conduct programmes to raise awareness as well as to de-stigmatise treatment. The challenge for psychiatrists and therapists is not to antagonise the parents because that might impact the treatment of their children.
Often the gaps in treatment lead to relapse of self-harming tendencies or impact the prognosis.
“There are parents who refuse to accept their children’s condition. The young adults want to access treatment but when they get no support from their parents, the treatment gets discontinued. Most of them cannot pay for the treatment or the medicines,” said psychiatrist Sanjay Garg.
When a 23-year-old woman who was undergoing treatment while staying in a hostel in the city went back to her hometown, her parents found out she was on medicine and allegedly forced her to stop taking them.
Back home, she did not have the money for the treatment because she used to pay after saving from her expenses incurred in the city, a psychiatrist who did not want to be named said.
Mental health professionals said people in the age group of 18 to 25 often encounter complex problems that they are unable to handle, at a time when they are still dependent on their parents. “There are some parents who bring their children to us to fix them. When we try to tell the parents that they need to change attitude, they get upset,” said psychiatrist Jai Ranjan Ram. The problem gets aggravated when the child comes across domestic violence.
“For us, the welfare of the young person is primary, so we cannot antagonise parents. We have to strike a balance between the child and the parent,” said Ram.
The challenge is how to engage someone in treatment when they do not believe in it. Psychotherapist Farishta Dastur Mukerji said continuity of treatment is hampered unless parents agree.
Garg said the reason for the denial among parents is a lack of awareness and stigma around mental health.
“Parents attribute the condition to their children being lazy, instead of trying to understand them. Some parents challenge us with things like ‘how do you know my child is depressed’. We don’t have any concrete test to justify that.”