India's Selective Outrage on Mental Health

India has a pattern with mental health: it gets loud when someone famous suffers, then goes quiet. A celebrity death, a public crisis, a documentary: there is a wave of posts, articles, and panel discussions. Celebrities speak about their anxiety. Brands post green ribbons. HR departments circulate wellness tips. Then it subsides, and the structural access to care hasn't moved in any meaningful way. Fewer than 1 in 10 Indians with mental health needs ever see a professional. The country has one of the lowest mental health professional to population ratios in Asia. Most corporate wellness programmes remain performance rather than provision. We are very good at awareness. We are not very good at anything that comes after it.

The problem with selective outrage is not that it's hypocritical; it's that it substitutes for the harder, slower work of structural change. Sustained investment in training more therapists, meaningful insurance coverage for mental health treatment, and employer accountability beyond token wellness days would help. So would a public conversation that addresses affordability honestly, because the people most likely to need help are often least able to pay for it. If you're a person in India who needs mental health support right now, the national conversation hasn't helped you much. Progress exists, but it is slow and uneven, and it tends to reach the already advantaged first.