When Piketty came to India
Thomas Piketty, the French economist and author of the famous book Capital in the Twenty First Century, was recently in India. He delivered a lecture on the state of inequality globally as well as in India.
Noting that India was “staring at mental health epidemic” President Ram Nath Kovind on Thursday called upon the society to fight the stigma around mental health.
Speaking at the inauguration of the 21st World Congress of Mental Health in New Delhi, Kovind said the National Mental Health Survey 2016 has found that 14 per cent of India’s population required active mental health interventions.
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“We need to talk about mental health issues and treat depression as a disease that can be cured — not as a guilty secret,” Kovind said in his address at the event which is taking place in India for the first time with delegates participating from 50 nations.
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“Those in metros and young (are the) most vulnerable. In India both factors cause for concern; we’re staring at mental health epidemic,” he added.
The president further said that the National Mental Health Programme was building 22 centres of excellence in the field of mental health while the District Mental Health Programme was taking the conversation about mental health to grassroots.
However, for a huge population of 1.25 bn, there were just 5,000 psychiatrists and 2,000 psychologists in the country, highlighted Kovind as he stressed on the need to link India’s wealth of traditional knowledge to modern research on mental health.
“I look forward to receiving feedback on deliberations on the role of yoga in battling anxiety, depression and mental illness,” he said.
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