What is the first image that comes to your mind when I say the word depression? Is it a person lying forlornly on their bed? Or perhaps it’s someone looking at the rain through the window with eyes mirroring the storm outside.
Unfortunately, unlike most health problems, mental health problems do not always manifest themselves physically. Perhaps, this is the reason why we are so easily able to dismiss them. Since what you cannot see, cannot possibly exist.
In fact, in a 2015 article published in ‘The Atlantic’ it has been suggested that psychiatrists are still unable to define depression. With such little understanding of such a dangerous disease, it is no wonder that we lose so many lives to this disease.
Risila Binta Wazer was a successful Bangladeshi model who decided to take her life in her apartment in Badda yesterday. The cause of her taking such a drastic step is still unknown but speculation is rife about martial spats with her husband. She was on a Whatsapp Video call with her husband Imrul Hassan when he noticed she was trying to commit suicide. He immediately cut the call and asked his mother-in-law to go find her. She was found hanging from the ceiling after she committed suicide.
The news of Risila’s death follows the suicide of a much beloved musician Zeheen Ahmed. The resulting outpouring of grief and commemoration on social media has started a discussion on mental health. But what follows next is exasperating. Our Facebook feed will now be littered with well-meaning souls whose statuses would resemble the following: Please don’t hurt yourself but talk to me instead because I will magically heal all that is broken inside.
Let’s get real for a second.
None of these people actually expect a depressed individual to contact them and even if a person did they wouldn’t know what to do with them. Nonetheless this empathetic reaction is well meant and might even lead to some good. However, the problem arises when some thoughtless soul throws around the word: coward. They justify this by saying that suicide hurts the living more than the dead. But do you really think that the family of the bereaved needs to be told that their loved one was a ‘coward,’ that they lacked the courage to motor through the hard times?
Such comments that are made this easily are senseless and are of no use to anyone. They say when a parent dies, a child feels his own mortality. But when a child dies, it is immortality that a parent loses. Thus the need to be more mindful of how we talk to people cannot be stressed enough.
If you really want to make a difference, look around you and observe. Observe the changes in behaviour that your loved one is going through. Are they more restless than before? Do they not hangout often? Have they given up on a passion they were desperately following? Observe and pick up the little signs and be there for them.
To speculate about the cause behind Risila’s reason to end her life benefits no one. Risila has been survived by her husband and a 4-year-old daughter. And all we can do is only hope and pray for their family in their hour of need.
Risila, we will always remember you!