Have you felt that you couldn’t handle your mental stress by yourself? Do you think sadness and depression mean the same? How often do you go to a psychologist, not for any particular therapy, but just a check-up? More often than not, we tend to treat the issues of our psychological well-being as something that could be easily overlooked or taken care of by ourselves. Psychologists like Sonakshi Gandhi with 8 years of experience, and her mental health service called ‘The Mind Garden’ try to change this perspective with experience, education and skills.

Sonakshi Gandhi, 31, began walking on the path of psychology 16 years ago. She asserted that she found the discipline of Psychology very intriguing and went on to pursue an honours undergraduate degree to understand the field better. “As I learnt more, I became mesmerised at how simple, applicable and generalisable the concepts were. I moved on to do a Masters from the University Of Delhi, where I learnt more about human behaviour. I decided to pursue Psychology and make my passion my profession,” Sonakshi said. After her post graduation, Sonakshi worked for a year as a psychologist at an NGO that specializes in helping individuals with multiple disabilities, parallelly studying for M.Phil degree entrances! Sonakshi cracked both NIMHANS and IHBAS, however, she decided to stay in Delhi and pursue her dream in the latter. She was already a clinical psychologist by then, who worked with various hospitals, clinics and NGOs across Delhi NCR before founding her own practice.

The Mind Garden

The Mind Garden is a mental health service providing psychotherapy to individuals, couples and families in a safe, empathetic and in a non-judgemental manner. Sonakshi Gandhi affirmed that she came up with her own practice as she had observed a lack of ethical, professionally trained mental health service options for clients. Speaking on the name of the practice, she revealed, “The Mind Garden uses the analogy of the mind as a garden where you have various things growing and coexisting. Its tagline- Bloom Where You’re Planted signifies being able to flourish under any circumstance.” Indeed, the idea seems to have rooted to its objective. The picture it creates is of rainbows and sunshine. Nevertheless, dark clouds treated Sonakshi no differently. She maintained that one of the major difficulties she faced was to de-stigmatise therapy, which goes beyond word of mouth. People still don’t quite understand why they need to pay for mental health services. “The quest for ‘results’ in therapy is a circumstance of the medical model domination. Psychotherapy is a journey, wherein the therapist and the client are fellow travellers and facilitate each other,” the psychotherapist explained.

The premise of the pandemic

As many articles and studies have been mentioning for a year now that mental illness and issues are increasing amidst the pandemic, the role of a Clinical Psychologist becomes more vital in improving the overall mental well being of a population. Sonakshi informed that the pandemic has witnessed destabilisation in many ways. As a person of professional help, one of the main areas of work has been to help people deal with loss and grief. “Not just grief of death, but also the loss of a relationship, job, travel plan, time in college etc. Neurotic disorders such as anxiety and depression have also increased phenomenally during Covid,” the clinical psychologist added. Due to the pandemic, in-person sessions are not an option anymore. Therefore, online consultations are the most relevant of methods these days. Initially, Sonakshi and her clients had reservations about the efficacy of therapy and the impact of a therapeutic relationship that would have been maintained through mere interfaces; it has proven to be successful and a preferred choice among clients.

Vulnerability, applications and society

In conversation about the possibility of the age group of 15-25 being prone to mental illnesses, Sonakshi held that mental health is heavily dependent on context. One cannot ignore the intersectionalities of gender, politics, economic environments and social justice systems when it comes to understanding mental health and wellness. She mentioned that the current political environment, the social surroundings as well as the pandemic are all contemporary concerns that heavily impact young adults. “The easy availability of the internet, social media being a cruel place are other concerns that young adults have to deal with. These too, impact their mental health and make them a vulnerable age group,” she said.

Sonakshi Gandhi

The new low cost therapists are apps that could be easily downloaded and utilised. The prevalence of these apps has increased amidst the Coronavirus. Many young adults resort to such apps instead of gaining qualified professional help. Sonakshi agreed that apps have revolutionised how people access help for mental health. Nonetheless, she believes a few areas of concern would be the training and qualification of the therapists on board with each app, and the way to facilitate a better therapeutic relationship between the therapist and client on the medium.

While the 21st century openly discusses depression and other mental conditions that were previously considered to be a taboo, India still has a long way to go in treating, visiting a therapist or a psychologist as normal as going for a health check up to your physician. Citing numerical data, Sonakshi claimed that only 0.06% of the health budget is spent on mental health. This results in less or no infrastructure to build academic institutions, pay teachers, mental health hospitals and clinics etc. “India has 898 clinical psychologists and 4000 psychiatrists for a populationof 1.35 billion people, where 7.5% of the population has mental health concerns. These are grave issues and have caused a mental illness epidemic within a pandemic,” she contended.

Future endeavours

Sonakshi disclosed that she intends to expand The Mind Garden to offer therapy services at various fee ranges. All therapists working at this service shall be supervised and their credentials and training vetted before onboarding them. The Clinical Psychologist signed off with a few tips to improve general mental well being:

–        Talking about your feelings in a trusting and non-judgmental environment is therapeutic in itself.

–        Take a break and relax yourself. Don’t overburden yourself with work, studies or anything else. Try to live in a balanced manner, giving space to everything.

–        Often we tend to be extremely harsh in our self-talk. So, be mindful and change the way you talk to yourself.

–        Seek help if you need to. There is no shame in wanting to work on your mental health.