Navigating Mental Health

In an era dominated by the digital screen replacing the humble pages of a book, this Conference on ‘Navigating Mental Health through the Gateway of Language and Literature’ kindled my interest in the sessions. Kudos to my team at the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, at Presidency University, led by Dr Pritha Sanyal, who had thought of this topic. ‘Navigating’….well, I thought to myself, is so well replaced by ‘Scrolling’. Mental health! With the amount of scrolling done today on the e-devices, the complexities of the human mind can only be on the rise. Yet the digital screen illuminated by so many pages and thoughts can only give you a surface level of understanding. Talk AI and the screen asks if you would like to dive deep into the AI mode. The AI mode would still need language or else the essence of the search is lost. For search and accuracy, the right prompts are to be given; for the right prompts, language is essential, and for language, reading is basic. The nexus is well understood and the enigma well drawn. What does one do, and how does one work with a generation that fluctuates between reading and watching digital screens? Fleeting attention, I thought, leads to lesser attention spans even on devices. But reading continues thankfully in education today, and literature is still a well-sought-after domain of study, as there is a necessity to learn the basics of language to read captions or bubbles or a quick few lines to comprehend the text. Does this leave any room for intellectual or emotional enrichment?… is my next thought. Thoughtful and empathetic, a theme for such a conference indeed.

Reading, as I mentioned earlier, is essential for vocabulary building and the consumption of words connote language. Language benefits humankind when it comes to the expression and articulation of thoughts, ideas and emotions. So, the connection between reading and reading of literature in specific comes clear through the theme.

Moving on, Mental health, at times calls for therapy and it goes without doubt that reading the right kind of literature certainly provides therapy. Perhaps the therapeutic effect of literature is immeasurable. Personally speaking, reading provides a certain kind of calm that cannot be easily defined. It takes you away to a different world of your own and leads you to a world of relaxation where tension has no place. To this day, this claim is true. Look at the Newgen, whenever they choose to escape from a crowd, their attention goes to their phone, and they start scrolling the screen. A board room discussion, where due to lack of reading there is little contribution, has you take respite in scrolling. I have even come across people who escape decision-making and pretence sets in, as they start scrolling their devices. Call it poor etiquette or what you will, but reading persists. Delving into an area of interest is so swifter and quicker when one has these devices handy. So, the value of the device is unquestionable. The therapeutic effects of reading, for sure lingers in the world.

Therapy leads me to the world of theatre and plays. Very little of our time goes into watching plays or spending time in the theatre. Imagination and the world of creativity are lost when it comes to research on theatre and poetry. Perhaps with affordability and technology, apart from accessibility, the mystery and discovery aspects of the human mind are lost. Places and holiday destinations need no exploration skills, and one is no longer surprised by the magical reality of places and the aura of people, thanks to Google.

Greek plays were considered therapeutic. The Tragedies that dealt with trauma, madness, and suffering offered catharsis, and one watched them and empathised with the characters and went through an emotional experience as if they were our own. Human psychology was deeply explored by these plays,s and by watching these characters perform on stage, go through their struggle and challenges, had us reconcile with our own difficulties. I often wonder whether these plays that one watched are today replaced by the reels that we watch. And what with Insta and YouTube reading our minds and leading us to watch the reels that suit our moods and our minds.

Once upon a time, teachers came dressed to class with one prop or another and learnt the lines of a play or a poem before they taught us Greek drama or English Romantic poetry. Laughter as a medicine came from the Comedies and one simply learnt to cope with life’s struggles in a lighter way. I simply can’t keep count of time when I refer to some of these characters, as a mother to my daughter, or refer to some plots or themes that convey a deeper sense or meaning to the situation that we are in today.

A younger me had me deriving solace from the fairy tale books that I had a collection of. A big fat pink book carried all the fairy tales, some of which I read repeatedly. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, drifted me to the world of the dwarfs when I fought with my siblings or cousins, and I couldn’t care less about what they had to say to me. Cinderella’s fairy godmother had me wish for one every night as I went to bed, and the tale of The Ugly Duckling was a solace when I was compared with a sibling who was good at Math and had scored better than I. A magical world, but a world that can transform you and shift your way of thinking. These fairy tales and other stories that one reads in childhood are a part of Bibliotherapy today thankfully.

School and college had me devour George Eliot’s book, Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Tennyson. ‘The Mill on the Floss’ had left my young mind with impressions that have lasted. The book is concerned with mental health, Maggie’s conflict with society, with her family, and their distress. Each of the characters grapples with their complexities. Maggie chopping her hair in anger and vengeance can never leave my mind, and the way in which she took solace in the attic had me escaping to the attic of our old manor house then. To date, when I teach ‘The Lady of Shalott’, we discuss on how her isolation is a powerful allegory for mental health. Her yearning for connection, loneliness and shackles of patriarchy that she must fight apart from societal pressure has been debatable in every class. When Netflix series entered my world, I enjoyed watching the series on Emily Dickinson, a poetess whose life turned around from being that of a rebellious girl to a brilliant writer. Her poems explore the themes of mental anguish, depression and inner turmoil.

Literature certainly is a safe space to explore these complex emotions, while Bibliotherapy is a good approach to enable humankind cope with mental health and issues. Today, when one refers to Oedipus complex, Electra complex, Saviour complex, God complex, Cinderella complex or narcissism, one wonders at the connection between literature and psychology and mental health. How literature and psychology can influence language is a study of its own. However, the base of it all is the habit of reading. So read on…..