Sharmistha Gooptu
I started my interview with eminent obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr. Mukesh Gupta, asking if mental health was more spoken and heeded since the pandemic, when it became a household topic of discussion. Dr. Gupta responded saying, “No — in fact, in the medical fraternity it has been a plank for the longer term”.
According to him, his patients, whether new mothers, or expecting ones, are counselled by a robust support system that tracks signs of postpartum depression and tries to create a buffer outside of the immediate family. Likewise, Dr. Reema Sircar, senior IVF consultant, mentioned mental health as a key factor to work on for couples that opt for fertility treatments. For her, the annual celebration of World Mental Health Day is imperative, to generate more conversation and awareness around the need for mental health, and mental health issues that abound in modern day society.
At RevSportz, we have marked this day, and especially in our work with athletes and sports people, we have forever stressed the need to know the mind state of an athlete. When Nikhat Zareen loses her bout at the Olympic Games, or the supposedly invincible Neeraj Chopra underperforms, the media covering them takes note of only the win or loss. In victory, they are celebrated and in defeat, relegated. For our part, we have stayed with athletes on this journey, through wins and losses, tracking their journey through, also speaking about their mental health.
Today we present for our viewers a day-long conclave with sports persons and medical professionals who speak to the subject of mental health. Sania Mirza and Mirabai Chanu speak about their journey as icons and as women, and the highs and lows of being in the public eye, of having the hopes of the nation pinned on them, and of success and failure.
The conclave in collaboration with BSV (a Mankind Group Company), is an effort to amplify the conversation around mental health today, whether the mental health of sports persons, women, new mothers or younger people.
The message, it’s perfectly normal to not be all right, and it is imperative to speak out on this subject. We hope our viewers will draw support from the words of Sania and Mirabai, who have embraced victory, seen failure, faced the world as women, and then bounced back trumping their challenges.
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