A Story to be told on World Mental Health Day
On world mental health day (10 th October) there are many episodes and stories which need to be remembered and retold. These are in fact stories of phenomenal success and also of the quiet transformation of society which may go unrecorded. I am writing about how from stigmatized false notions about mental health, acceptance was won for counseling and psychiatry in non-cosmopolitan small towns and cities. The acceptance was from the largely illiterate or semi-literate people from the rural society who began to visit psychiatrists without hiding the fact from the others. One such story is about Dr. K. A Ashok Pai, a renowned psychiatrist, a B.C Roy awardee and the first chairman of the Karnataka State Mental Health Task Force before he passed away in September 2016. I do not want to write about the later phase of his career when he was known nationally, much awarded and already a legend but about how it all began. He gave up his job as a Governm...