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@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:00

Feeling Better: A Conversation with Mrs. Shrradha Sidhwani

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She is a therapist who not only speaks to people individually, but she is in the media constantly talking about the rise in suicide in India and globally. She talks about the need for us to normalize the conversation around mental health. And I'm hoping that this conversation can open up all of us to find the language, to discuss this conversation with Grace and with openness, open hearts, open minds. Dr. Shivani, thank you for being here

Therapist, media expert in the field of psychology- Mrs. Shrradha Sidhwani is leading this discussion about mental health in India and world-wide

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@shrradhas
shrradha sidhwani
@shrradhas · 4:18

Mental Health is just a part of you, its not your identity.

Hi, Deborah, it's nice talking to you on this very important topic on mental health. So through the COVID pandemic, we have seen a huge number of cases in terms of anxiety, depression, panic attacks. You call it PTSD. We've seen a lot of grief and loss. So these are the rising concerns where mental health is concerned. We've seen an upscale of suicide rates
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@shrradhas
shrradha sidhwani
@shrradhas · 5:00

Suicide

Now, what are some of the reasons that we have seen an upscale in suicide through the lockdowns? I think there have been emotional hurdles where these children or the youth were looking forward to their schools, colleges and were unable to perform them. So in terms of autonomy, which is one of the most basic psychological needs, your freedom to exercise your choices was taken away in terms of connecting and relatedness. That was taken away because they could not make friends
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@shrradhas
shrradha sidhwani
@shrradhas · 1:05
We need community centers or mental health centers out in the public arena through media channels, through platforms like yours, so that we give awareness on not only what the issues are, but also the resolution of the same. So conflict resolution is very important in terms of suicide. Coping through loss. Coping through trauma is extremely important here. One of the main reasons of suicide could be a lot of increase in physical abuse or violence, which we have seen through the pandemic and through the lockdowns
@shrradhas
shrradha sidhwani
@shrradhas · 1:36
We are looking for certainty, control, perfectionism, and those kinds of attitude and behavioral patterns need to be changed. Once they are changed. You will see there is a lot of mindfulness that comes into the person, and suicide can be prevented. So I think looking at preventive models of suicide, looking at coping strategies and depression will definitely reduce the rate of suicide. Like I said before, we are seeing high cases among the youth more in terms of females, but also in terms of men today
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@Swell
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15

Welcome to Swell!

@shrradhas
shrradha sidhwani
@shrradhas · 4:20
So levels of the performance rates have reduced and therefore the profitability of the organization will reduce. So bringing in mental health conversations is profitable even to the company on a large scale basis. And we today have studies done on this issue. So working with Hrs working with larger teams is constantly and currently the need of the hour
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@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 4:14

@shrradhas programs that give you hope

Here are the problems here's what you could do. So are you seeing corporations right now taking on the challenge of mental health bit by bit where they are putting in the programming where their leadership at the very top is saying, we need to do something about this. I'd love to hear from you sort of some good news about one Corporation or one leader that you feel has stepped in and said, let's do this. Here's how we do it. Here's the program
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@shrradhas
shrradha sidhwani
@shrradhas · 5:00

Mental health

And a couple of ways would also be in engaging in conflict resolutions rather than avoiding conflicts. You spoke about the whole narrative about compassion within yourself and between your interpersonal relationships. And a lot of psychological research. Yes, focuses on the interaction between the two. So in workspaces, you can see if your culture of compassion is not established, you tend to be hard on yourself, and this interaction has to be emphasized. Individuals have certain psychological needs that are not met in work cultures
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@shrradhas
shrradha sidhwani
@shrradhas · 1:45
Preventive treatment. You know, we need to focus on more of the prevention programs, which can look at two aspects. One is the policy, the mental health policies that have been maintained or established in the work organizations. And second, is incorporating an inclusive environment or a culture to freely explicitly discuss these issues. Coming to certain founders. Yes, we've had the Instamojo founder Samburtswan we've had Snappeel co founder Konal behalf
@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:09

Insurance regulatory possibility? And your NGO

But then I hear people constantly saying my insurance doesn't cover mental health, so you hear it. But you also hear that this trend is going towards a good direction. I'm wondering if you know about these. Can this be put into some kind of regulation, or can you regulate insurance companies? I don't even know. I also want to follow up with a question about the NGO a part of I believe you're part of an NGO. And can you tell us about that?
@shrradhas
shrradha sidhwani
@shrradhas · 4:51
As you've seen, mental illnesses are of a different spectrum, so you can have severe anxiety, you can have mild anxiety, you can have severe depression or somebody who's very mildly depressed. So there is no one cost that fits all because there is no one treatment that fits all. A patient may take 14 sessions. Some people may take prolonged therapy for six months, so therefore, I think there is a discrepancy there to maintain or standardized policy
@shrradhas
shrradha sidhwani
@shrradhas · 4:15
Coming to my organization. We initiated this organization called Reality and you, which is Ray. We have a website on which is WW Reality and you organization. Org. We initiated the purpose of this organization is to sort of first is to bring awareness on mental health issues. Of course, we have seen that people have started talking about mental health issues more openly and make it made it more inclusive. However, we do believe that a large percentage of the population cannot afford mental health services
@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:10

Growth and leadership https://realityandyou.org/about-ray/

Shroud. It's so amazing to spend time on your website. I'm going to put the link here. And what strikes me first of all is that you started this. You founded this during COVID, which couldn't have been easy with all the infrastructure issues going on to serve the the urgent issues of Covet, you were able to begin this. And what I'm most struck about is the fact that you're already doing workshops to help leaders
@shrradhas
shrradha sidhwani
@shrradhas · 5:00

reality and you foundation

So in case anybody wants to reach out to mental health services in terms of counseling, special education, they can formally call us. And the numbers are mentioned again on the website. So this is part of the funding and awareness programs that we have initiated. In terms of doing workshops, we are also launching. We already have initiated workshops. We are now tying up with different schools to initiate emotional wellbeing workshops for kids
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@shrradhas
shrradha sidhwani
@shrradhas · 1:54
Yet we are also focusing, like I said before, on research programs. And sooner or later, we will be tying up with auto organizations at a very high leadership levels in giving them a research based output which will help their productivity. So thank you once again, Deborah
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@malaikathoughts
Malaika Stanley
@malaikathoughts · 2:36

Thank you for starting this conversation :)

The list goes on and on. But when it comes to mental health, we couldn't create a list of what we learned growing up at all. And so I think what I took away from that is that as you were saying in this conversation is that mental health, even though it's getting more focused on, there's really not enough. I mean, there never can be enough. And I think that it really just overall needs to be more focused on, as you guys are saying
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