Last month, I wrote the following to my friends. I think it is worth blogging ...
Recently, there are two cases of attempted murder-and-suicide in USA. Both are tamilians. The reason was found to be
depression. Here are the links:
Fremont Mother, Infant Daughter Die In Murder-Suicide Arson Fire: http://www.ktvu.com/news/23528646/detail.html (May 13th, 2010)
Indian woman hurls toddler, self into river in U.S.: http://beta.thehindu.com/news/international/article431557.ece (May 16th, 2010)
I can not even imagine a mother killing her own baby and attempting for suicide. It is a very serious issue that we, Indians, have to understand. In this country, the postpartum
depression is considered a very serious issue and they provide counselling too. I am not aware that anyone in our circle went for postpartum counselling. Neither we did! However, these two incidents really showed that Indians are no exceptions to postpartum
depression! In my opinion, it is a time to consider such counselling even though we think the postpartum
depression would not affect us.
Here is what I think why such
depression could occur to Indians too. Logic and emotions are two important things for human beings. It is considered that men have higher logical sense than emotion. Similarly, women have more emotions than logic. That is why men criticize women's emotions about money, jewels, neighbors, friends, and relatives as if they (men) do not have any emotions! It is a myth! Everybody has emotions and certain level of logic, and the elasticity of tolerating them differs in every person. The truth is that both logic and emotions have equal weight in our life and none is better the other!
Having said that women have more emotion than logic, it is no surprise that they are affected by their emotions. They tend to show their emotions to others very easily than men. On the other hand, men resist their emotions to certain level (little more than women) and they too show their emotions to others inevitably. The resistance of emotions comes by the subconscious logical analysis of our mind by our past experience. Since, men are able to resist emotions to certain extend, they think that women are a the source of problems by their excessive emotions. Hence, they start ignoring women even when it is needed. The above two cases are clearly the evidence for such claim. In these both cases, women did not get proper support from their respective husbands.
When we go deep into such issue, we will realize that such depressions are not just due to the lack of support from respective husbands, but also due to following reasons,
- Lack of support from parents: Since we live several thousand miles away from India, it becomes hard for our parents to support us enough. The reasons could be,
- Visa problems
- Duration of stay per trip
- Expense for the trip to USA from India
- Psychological fear that USA based families make their respective parents as unpaid servants!
- Peer pressure: I think no men and women are exception to peer pressure. From the day one of planning for baby to how the child is brought up.
- Comparison: Comparison is inevitable between children of same age. Even though we know every child is unique as flowers of blossom, we still tend to compare. Every child is as unique and beautiful as every flower is!
- Lack of support from friends: As friends, we do have a social responsibility of supporting our friends and provide them counselling when they go through their hard times. I think this need is over shadowed by our emotions in our day-to-day life. The end result is emotions win, people hurt others knowingly or unknowingly, and people are messed up!
- Finally, lack of enthusiasm to regulate our mind: Depression is a feeling that is no less than happiness, distress, anger, and jealousness etc. However, the outcome of it is worst than other feelings. We are stuck with our feeling because our mind wanders about many unwanted things in our life. Meditation is suggested for calming down our mind. But, our day-to-day needs and responsibilities look more important that 20 minutes of meditation every day.
