THREAD (1/8) #Mentalhealth

I've long resisted the urge to join the ongoing conversation on mental health after SSR's death, and speak from my own experience. I thought this was best reserved for private discussion. But something snapped in me after watching this VILE broadcast. https://twitter.com/TimesNow/status/1290268091599876097

It has dredged up an old, painful memory: a pale winter afternoon in 2011, when, standing alone in a freezing living room not far from the Harvard campus, I contemplated the bleakest thought of my life: "Wouldn't the world be better off without me in it?" (2/8)

The idea was silly, liable to be swatted away in happier minds by a defiant, superseding thought. But in mine it appeared with the force of irrefutable truth, keeping any dissenting memory beyond reach, behind the veil of conscious experience. I was thinking of going. (3/8)

In the end I didn't. I set up an emergency appointment with a shrink. I calmed down. But the point is this: the young man who came so close to the brink looked far from the tragic mess some expect inner tumult to resemble. He looked, in fact, exactly like this. (4/8)

He didn't just know how to smile for photos. He could be ebullient, trading witty barbs with a teacher one moment; and accosting,with a smile, a classmate in a café the next. His warmth didn't mean his mind was at peace; he simply craved acknowledgement. Escape from despair.(5/8)

A smiling face is no guarantee of a mind at peace. Shades of despair ranging from garden-variety sadness -- occasioned, say, by a failed romance -- to clinical conditions like depression, can hide behind joyful facades, erected to help the wearer fade into crowds. (6/8)

None of this means I can intuit the precise emotional state of Mr. Rajput in the months preceding his death; nobody can speak for him. The point of this thread is instead to plead with my colleagues in the media to stop reinforcing dangerous stereotypes about mental health. (7/8)

As I end, I am thinking with deep compassion of the thousands watching your broadcast, Times Now, and wondering: "I, too, have been hiding it all behind my smile. If I speak up now, who will believe me?" (8/8)