They say it at the breakfast table, in office meetings, on WhatsApp, during family gatherings and even in the therapist’s waiting room. They say it because explaining everything feels exhausting. They say it because they do not want to worry their parents. They say it because they have children to raise, deadlines to meet, bills to pay and responsibilities that do not pause simply because the mind is struggling. And sometimes, they say it because they have tried to speak before and discovered that nobody was really listening.
This World Mental Health Day, observed on October 10, the World Health Organization has chosen a theme that deserves more than a social-media post or a ceremonial conversation: “Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change.” It is a powerful reminder that people who have experienced mental-health difficulties are not merely recipients of care. Their experiences are a form of knowledge. Their stories can tell us where systems fail, where stigma persists, where families struggle and what meaningful recovery actually looks like.
As a mental health counsellor, I increasingly find that one of our biggest problems is not that people have nothing to say. It is that we have become poor listeners. We listen selectively. We listen while preparing our response. We listen for the information we need rather than the emotion beneath the words. We listen until we find an opportunity to give advice.
A young person says, “I don’t think I can handle this anymore,” and someone immediately responds, “You are young; you have your whole life ahead of you.” A woman says, “I feel completely exhausted,” and she is told, “Every woman has to manage the home and work.” A man says, “I am not doing well,” and someone reminds him that he has a family depending on him. An elderly parent says, “I feel lonely,” and the family assumes that providing food, medication, and a television is the same thing as providing companionship.
We often respond to distress by correcting it rather than understanding it. Mental health does not work that way. A person does not always need an immediate solution. Sometimes they need the safety of being able to tell the truth without being judged, corrected, compared or dismissed.
This distinction matters enormously in India, where emotional suffering still exists within a complicated web of family expectations, social reputation, gender roles, economic pressures and cultural ideas about resilience. We have begun talking about mental health more openly, but talking about mental health and understanding it are not the same thing.
There is a danger in turning mental-health awareness into another fashionable vocabulary. We know words such as anxiety, depression, trauma, burnout and narcissism. We use them frequently on social media. But sometimes we use them without understanding what they mean. A difficult day becomes “depression.” A disagreement becomes “gaslighting.” Feeling nervous before an examination becomes an “anxiety disorder.” And genuine suffering can consequently become either trivialised or sensationalized.
Mental health is neither a trend nor a personality accessory. It is part of human health. The World Health Organisation estimates that nearly one in seven people globally were living with a mental disorder in 2023, with anxiety and depressive disorders among the most common. At the same time, most people experiencing mental-health conditions do not receive effective care.
India has its own enormous challenge. The National Mental Health Survey of India found a current prevalence of mental morbidity of 10.6 percent among the surveyed population, while treatment gaps for different mental disorders ranged from approximately 70 to 92 percent. For common mental disorders, the treatment gap was estimated at 85 percent.
Behind these numbers are people. A mother who does not tell anyone that she has been experiencing panic attacks because she fears being called unstable. A college student who believes that asking for counselling means admitting failure. A father who has been grieving for years but thinks that crying would make him appear weak. A professional who is functioning brilliantly at work while privately struggling to get through the day. A caregiver whose own exhaustion remains invisible because everyone is focused on the person who is ill.
Statistics help us understand the scale of the problem. Lived experience helps us understand its texture. That is why this year’s World Mental Health Day theme is particularly significant.
For too long, mental-health systems have been designed around people rather than with them. Professionals, institutions, governments and organisations decide what people need, and then invite them to participate after the important decisions have already been made. But a person who has lived through depression, addiction, psychosis, trauma, suicidal thoughts or prolonged institutional care possesses knowledge that cannot always be acquired from a textbook.
There is a difference between knowing what depression is and knowing what it feels like to wake up every morning and have no emotional energy for a life you once enjoyed. There is a difference between studying anxiety and knowing what it means to live with a body that constantly behaves as though danger is approaching. There is a difference between reading about stigma and experiencing the moment when someone you love begins treating you differently after learning about your diagnosis.
Lived experience is not a substitute for professional expertise. Nor should personal experience be romanticised. But it is another form of expertise, and our mental-health systems become stronger when these forms of knowledge meet. This also requires us to rethink what we mean by recovery.
Recovery is not always a dramatic transformation. It may be getting out of bed. Returning to work. Calling a friend. Taking medication consistently. Setting one boundary. Going back to college. Learning to live with a painful memory without allowing it to dictate every decision. It may simply mean having a life in which one’s diagnosis is only one part of one’s identity.
We must also stop measuring mental health exclusively through crisis. We tend to intervene when something becomes visibly wrong. When a child stops attending school. When an employee collapses from burnout. When a marriage reaches breaking point. When substance use becomes impossible to hide. When a person reaches a point of crisis.
But prevention begins much earlier. It begins when schools teach emotional literacy alongside academic literacy. It begins when workplaces understand that psychological safety is not a corporate slogan but a condition for sustainable performance. It begins when parents learn that a child’s emotional world deserves as much attention as grades. It begins when men are allowed to acknowledge fear, loneliness and vulnerability without being told that these emotions threaten their masculinity.
It begins when women are not expected to carry the emotional labour of entire families simply because they are women. It begins when older people are not treated as burdens once they stop being economically productive. And it begins when we understand that asking someone, “How are you?” should not be a ritual question. We should be prepared for the answer.
This is especially important in an age of unprecedented connectivity. We have more ways to communicate than any previous generation, yet many people feel profoundly unheard. Social media has made visibility easier but vulnerability more complicated. We can broadcast our lives to thousands of people while being unable to tell one person sitting next to us that we are struggling.
Artificial intelligence is now entering this emotional landscape as well. People increasingly turn to digital tools for information, companionship, reflection and even emotional support. Technology can potentially expand access, particularly where professional services are scarce. But it cannot become an excuse for withdrawing from human relationships and human responsibility.
A chatbot can respond at midnight. A mental-health professional can provide structured care. But neither should replace the importance of a friend who notices that your voice has changed, a parent who asks twice, a colleague who says, “You don’t seem like yourself,” or a community that does not abandon someone when they become difficult to understand.
Technology may help us scale support. Humanity determines whether that support feels like care. We must also become more careful about the language we use around mental illness. Words can either open doors or close them. Calling someone “crazy,” “weak,” “attention-seeking” or “unstable” may appear casual to the speaker, but such language can become another barrier between a suffering person and the help they need.
And there is another misconception we must confront: seeking professional help does not mean that a person has failed to cope. Sometimes counselling is not about fixing what is “wrong” with us. It is about creating a space where we can examine what has happened to us, understand our patterns, develop healthier ways of coping and make choices with greater clarity.
Mental health also cannot be separated from the circumstances in which people live. Loneliness, unemployment, financial insecurity, violence, discrimination, relationship breakdown, caregiving responsibilities, displacement, chronic illness and social isolation can all affect psychological well-being. The WHO itself describes mental health as existing on a continuum shaped not only by individual factors but also by family, community and structural circumstances.
Therefore, telling people simply to “be positive” is not mental-health care. Sometimes positivity becomes another demand placed upon people who are already struggling. What we need is compassion without condescension, professional care without stigma and communities that understand that vulnerability is not the opposite of strength.
This year’s theme asks us to listen to lived experience. But listening must not become another performative exercise. We cannot invite survivors to tell their stories merely to make an event more emotional and then ignore what those stories demand of us. We cannot ask people with lived experience to speak about institutional failures while refusing to change those institutions. We cannot celebrate resilience while leaving the conditions that caused the suffering untouched.
Listening must lead to action. It means involving people with lived experience in designing mental-health programmes. It means making services more accessible and affordable. It means strengthening community-based care. It means training healthcare workers to recognise psychological distress. It means creating safer schools and workplaces. It means respecting confidentiality and dignity. It means treating people with mental-health conditions as citizens with rights, not problems to be managed.
Most importantly, it means changing our idea of what a mentally healthy society looks like. A mentally healthy society is not one in which nobody struggles. It is one in which people do not have to hide their struggle to remain accepted. It is one in which a young man can say, “I am scared,” without being mocked.
It is one in which a woman can say, “I need help,” without being told that she is failing her family. It is one in which an adolescent can say, “I am overwhelmed,” and an adult listen before delivering a lecture. It is one in which an elderly person can say, “I am lonely,” and someone makes time to sit beside them. It is one in which a person living with mental illness is not reduced to a diagnosis.
And perhaps most importantly, it is one in which we understand that listening is not passive. Real listening changes what we do. If someone tells us that a service is inaccessible, we change the service. If a survivor tells us that a system made them feel powerless, we examine the system. If a patient tells us that they felt judged, we ask how care can become more compassionate. If a family tells us that they do not know how to support someone, we educate the family rather than blaming them.
The greatest lesson of this year’s World Mental Health Day may therefore be deceptively simple: listen to people before designing solutions for them. Not every person wants to be rescued. Many want to be understood. Many want to participate in decisions about their own lives. Many want their identity to extend beyond their diagnosis, their trauma or the worst thing that ever happened to them.
As a mental health counsellor, I believe we need to make room for that complexity.
Because behind every diagnosis is a human being. Behind every statistic is a life. Behind every crisis is a story that often began much earlier. And behind many apparently ordinary faces is an emotional world we may know nothing about.
Perhaps the next time we ask someone, “How are you?”, we should pause long enough to hear the answer. Perhaps we should listen without immediately fixing. Perhaps we should ask again when the first answer sounds rehearsed. Perhaps we should learn to recognise that silence can sometimes be a language too.
World Mental Health Day should not be just another date on the calendar when buildings turn green, social media fills with inspirational quotations and conversations about mental health trend for twenty-four hours. It should remind us that mental health is not an annual campaign. It is the invisible foundation beneath how we learn, work, love, parent, lead, grieve, recover and live. And if we truly want “real voices, real change”, then perhaps the change begins with something profoundly ordinary and profoundly difficult:
We listen. Not to reply. Not to diagnose. Not to judge. But to understand. Because sometimes, being genuinely heard is the first place from which healing becomes possible.
(The Author is Co-founder, Bharat Dialogues, National President, WICCI Media Council. For Mental health related Queries call 24×7 Toll-Free Mental Health Rehabilitation Helpline Kiran (1800-599-0019). Reach the columnist for counselling at: [email protected])
