An 18-year-old student, who spoke to the Post on condition of anonymity, has been battling borderline personality disorder for the past two years. Although she had been visiting a mental health counsellor, her condition saw little improvement during her time with her counsellor.
She feels her experience with the counsellor failed short of her expectations and that the treatment her counsellor offered had been ineffective.
She recalls her therapist giving her the most generic of advice. Although she had been taking purportedly exclusive therapy sessions for her condition, she says she was nowhere close to feeling better despite meeting up with her counsellor several times.
“I thought that going to a mental health counsellor would help me get better but it didn’t. My expectations from the counselling sessions were not in sync with the reality I faced at the clinic,” she said. “I would talk about my problems hoping she would provide me with guidance based on a thorough understanding of my problems. I had about 12 sessions with her, and every session felt like she was improvising with no concrete steps to cure me. Ultimately it was medication prescribed by my psychiatrist that got me to a better place mentally. I just wish I had received good therapy so that I could understand my condition better.”
The teenager is not the only one who has been struggling to find the right direction towards recovery.
Shiksha Risal, a 33-year-old NGO employee, who also advocates for mental health well-being, had been battling depression for three years. She recounts the lack of empathy she was dealt with by her psychiatrist and recalls being asked to bulldoze through her problems.
“My psychiatrist was indifferent to the problems I was suffering from. I would try talking about my problems, but I could tell that it fell on deaf ears. It is already difficult talking about mental health with the stigma attached to it in our society, and it is disheartening to be met with such disregard when we try to address our problems, especially by the very people who are supposed to heal us,” said Risal.
