Interview: Hourglass Writing Style
On the 10th of October, Miss. Malathi Nair was interviewed by Preethi Rizia Eunice and Christta of Jyoti Nivas College. The main aim behind this interview is to bring an awakening among people and to throw light on the importance of mental health. The interview took place in the premises of Nexus Mall, Koramangala. She was asked five questions regarding mental health, and how it is perceived by the society and also the importance of mental health.
On 10/10/2022 at 11:30 am, as we were approaching a few people to interview them on as a part of our Journalism assignment, I came across Miss. Malathi Nair, who was willing and excited to help us out on this venture.
The very first question asked was how would she define mental health, to which her reply was that mental health is the well being of the emotional, psychological and social parameters. It affects the thought process, feelings and actions of the individuals. It also throws light on how effectively we function under stressful conditions, decision making and how well we relate to one another.
We then moved to the next question was how important is Mental Health in today's generation? for which she had specified that depression is on the rise in today's generation especially among teenagers, adults and kids as well. In order to bring this under curb, and to bring the mental health issues under are supposed to be identified, addressed and treated on time to prevent subjects from taking such extreme measures. Mental health has become a growing concern which has to be addressed at the earliest. She also emphasized on how this contributes to the rising number of suicides seen in young adults and more commonly in teenagers and late teenagers as well. In order to bring this under control, she suggested that the children be more open to their parents and that even parents should be approachable, she said that a parent must be able to give the child the confidence that he/she/they are being scared to approach.
The third question to Miss Nair was on the underlying causes of depression, to which her reply was that there could be a number of underlying causes, it may be a single cause or a multiple cause. According to her statement a few causes were those of:
. Childhood Trauma.
. Physical Harassment and Abuse.
. Sexual Harassment and Abuse.
. Verbal abuse.
. Incidents that have an adverse effect, eg, losing someone close to us.
. Problems between Parents and Children.
. Broken relationships.
. Genetics, etc
The next question posed to her was whether mental health is a taboo or is it something that needs immediate attention, to which she said that mental health is something that needs immediate attention; since ignoring mental health issues can lead to very extreme situations. Ignoring these situations can lead to lower self confidence of the people. This leads to the downfall of the person mentally, emotionally, academically and so on. The person either ends up depressed and mentally disturbed. Mental health should be addressed as soon as possible.
The last question asked was how do you think does a physical ailment differ from a mental ailment? her answer to this was a physical ailment can either be a wound, a fever, an ache, etc. This can be cured with proper and timely treatment. This lasts for a period of days, weeks, months and in some cases years. This can be healed with the help of medicines. Whereas, in mental ailments, it can be caused by trauma, verbal, physical and/or sexual abuse and harassment. Here ailments are a result of suppressing all the emotions due to trauma, etc. This in turn leads to the subject not being able to open out to people, or seek help. This can play a major part in making or breaking of a person. Here, more attention is required and treatment includes not only medicines but also counselling, therapy, lifestyle changes, environmental changes, etc.
After this, we thanked her for helping us and bid farewell to our interviewee.
