Since my trip to India to launch the NLP4Kids franchise in this beautiful, diverse country, I have faced some heavy criticism from the country’s natives regarding the likelihood of successfully providing our coaching and mental wellbeing services to the nations young people. It appears that when it comes to mental health, India appears to have accepted denial. You might be wondering how acceptance and denial can co-exist in reality, let alone in the same sentence. Allow me to explain….

In 2019, notable research by the Indian Journal of Psychiatry, stated that in India, mental ill health is met with denial and a reluctance to get support, citing out of date stigmas and prejudices as the reason despite the likelihood of successfull treatment. Further, it criticises attitudes towards mental health in the country as “absurd” with those with highly treatable conditions left to suffer in silence (Hossain & Purohit, 2019).

A likely effect of this historic attitude is a chronic shortage of professionals to assist with the overwhelming number of those suffering with mild to severe mental health conditions. There is estimated to be less than 4,000 qualified professionals to help the 60-70 million people suffering (Birla, 2019), making India the leading suicide capital of the world (WHO, 2024) and causing a distinct lack in quality care (Birla, 2019). The shortage of professionals takes me to another common obstacle I heard whilst recruiting Indian Franchisees to provide NLP4Kids strategies to children, schools and families: “When we seek professional help we want Doctors and Psychiatrists. Not NLP Practitioners with alternative healthcare training!” I suspect that this is true, because by the time help is sought, only a doctor can help.

Mental health is a spectrum. The everyday phobias, bad habits, anxieties, low self-esteem issues, OCD tendencies do not always require Doctorate level expertise. Did you ever feel better after going for a walk or having a chat with a friend? That’s because these activities are good for your mental health. You don’t need a doctor to prescribe these things but you do sometimes need a coach or an outsider who can help you design plans and strategies to get out of a rut.

So far, things sound bleak. We know that low-level mental wellbeing issues that are not addressed perpetuate into much more troublesome, moderate to severe mental health concerns. Sadly, this is a huge contributor to the suicidality of this great country and frustratingly, it only required two small but significant shifts for the future of India’s children to have a brighter future ahead of them:

1. Challenge the sigma and make mental health as easy to discuss as physical health. You might think this requires a huge collective shift in consciousness of a population, but the reality is, it starts with you. Yes, you, the person reading this article, right now. Your mental health and the mental health needs of the people you care about is important. Start talking about it.
2. There needs to be a tremendous surge in the recruitment of early intervention practitioners to deliver help to children and families before symptoms progress and worsen. That’s where I come in, or more specifically, NLP4Kids India. We are recruiting and training practitioners to coach children, schools and families through the mild to moderate concerns to draw a halt to them so that the children you love and care about, do not grow up to become a statistic, or worse still, do not have the opportunity to grow up at all.

As a true Brit, I can promise you that we followed a very similar trend here in the UK for a very long time. We famously have a ‘stiff upper lip’, meaning we restrained ourselves from expressing emotion. Even when it would have been better for us to do so. However, we started to see a shift in the mental health landscape just before the global pandemic hit. It was just about acceptable to discuss or admit that a child might be having some mental wellbeing challenges.

For all the chaos, surge in physical and mental health issues and loss created by the pandemic, it did speed up the evolution of change towards mental health, even causing a reduction in the stigma in India (Patnaik, 2021). The most recent reports out of India are expressing far greater levels of openness regarding mental health post-pandemic. Despite 70% of young people aged 15-35 years feeling affected by poor mental health, more than 80% surveyed agreed that friends or parents would be supportive of therapy (Gujarat Samachar, 2023; Mind, n.d.; NeilsenIQ, 2023). In a survey by LiveLoveLaugh, 92% of respondents said they would support someone seeking mental health treatment which is an enormous leap from just 54% saying the same thing, pre-pandemic in 2018 (The Live Love Laugh Foundation Report, 2021)

Now you may be wondering why a provision such as NLP4Kids can’t simply be delivered as part of curriculum education. Again, mirroring our experience in the UK, it has been discovered that when interventions for anxiety and depression are delivered by teachers, they are less effective than when delivered by lay-counsellors (Mehra et al., 2022). You may be wondering why. I have a theory: Parents and teachers can give exactly the same ideas and advice as an NLP4Kids practitioner but it lands differently when we say it. I’d love to put that down to the hypnotic linguistics I’m going to teach you but I suspect the reality is that you can only be seen as an authority in one area. Parents are also the people who say “pick up your pants off of the floor” so sometimes their inspirational messaging is lost. Teachers are also the people who say “this homework isn’t good enough” – in fact sometimes teachers are the cause of anxiety so it’s unlikely they will also offer the remedy.

I recognise in your country the amazing human capital. This stands to create vast levels of prosperity throughout the land as soon as you share with me the in a vision to prevent mental ill-health and to equip your children with resilience and mental wellbeing. Attitudes towards mental health in India are changing (Desai, 2021). They are changing fast and anyone who thinks otherwise is looking at old data. You have an opportunity to be part of the change, right now with NLP4Kids by your side.

Follow NLP4Kids, we’re going somewhere amazing:

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Book in a call with the NLP4Kids India team and meet the creator and company director, Gemma Bailey: ANTIKA

By Gemma Bailey (MSc)
Company Director, NLP4Kids

www.NLP4Kids.org/practitioner/gemma-bailey

References

Birla, N. (2019, October 10). Mental health in India: 7.5% of country affected; less than 4,000 experts available . Economic Times . https://tinyurl.com/3ezvse8j

Desai, K. (2021, December 6). How India’s Perception of Mental Health Has Changed. Times of India. https://tinyurl.com/3dn57zde

Gujarat Samachar. (2023, November 4). Positive shifts that have taken place in understanding mental health in India. Https://English.Gujaratsamachar.Com/. https://tinyurl.com/5n8bb6zp

Hossain, M., & Purohit, N. (2019). Improving child and adolescent mental health in India: Status, services, policies, and way forward. Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 61(4), 415. https://doi.org/10.4103/psychiatry.IndianJPsychiatry_217_18

Mehra, D., Lakiang, T., Kathuria, N., Kumar, M., Mehra, S., & Sharma, S. (2022). Mental Health Interventions among Adolescents in India: A Scoping Review. Healthcare, 10(2), 337. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare10020337

Mind. (n.d.). Indian Survey Reveals Millenials And GenZ’s Attitudes Towards Mental Health and Not Supportive Parents. Mind.Help/News. Retrieved July 1, 2024, from https://tinyurl.com/4fx56say

NeilsenIQ. (2023). ITC’s Feel Good with Fiama Mental Wellbeing Survey 2023 unveils Interesting Facts. https://tinyurl.com/5b6cu74m

Patnaik, R. (2021). Mental Wellness: The Changing Indian Attitude. https://tinyurl.com/2cddu5n6

The Live Love Laugh Foundation Report. (2021). How India Perceives Mental Health 2021. https://tinyurl.com/38x84tem

WHO. (2024). Suicide. World Health Organisation. https://www.who.int/india/health-topics/suicide