Knowledge
Saving Ananya
Six months after losing my 16-year-old daughter Ananya to suicide, questions about stress, mental health, sadness, resilience, and depression, haunt me to no end.
The most beautiful phase of one’s life is teenage life. We all have fond memories of our adolescent times. This phase is a busy and exciting time in the journey of life. But then all that glitters is not gold. Many young, seemingly happy hearts are stressing beyond the point they can handle. Six months after losing my 16-year-old daughter Ananya to suicide, questions about stress, mental health, sadness, resilience, and depression, haunt me to no end.
What could I have done to save Ananya?
Like any other teenage kid, Ananya was a bubbly young girl, beautiful, intelligent, ambitious, talented, an achiever, and most importantly, a child with a defined life purpose. She was a trained singer and performed at many events. She infused laughter and chatter into every conversation. She had many stories to share about her school day, her friends, and general thoughts about the world. Suddenly, it all ended; there was a silence that created an irreplaceable and irreversible void.
Talking with Ananya was easy. We connected on various topics, academics, career choices, friends, human behaviour, music, nature, and many more. We both shared our perspectives on these topics, and needless to say, we enjoyed these conversations. For a child who was comfortable sharing everything with me, I am at a loss today, wondering why she could not share her darkest emotions with me. How did I fail to recognise that my child needed help? Why couldn’t I, a mother, hear my child’s silent cry?
I find myself constantly revisiting the days surrounding the moment when I lost my very soul. Ananya had just finished her physics exam and was unhappy that she did not perform as expected. We spoke about what went wrong, and apparently, Ananya blacked out during her exam due to lack of sleep. She felt drowsy and slept for about half an hour in the examination hall. It was a blow she couldn’t handle. The fear of the devastating effect, the loss of time would have on her results was debilitating for an achiever like Ananya. She feared the worst.
Why was my child not ready to accept this perceived failure?
The Silent Killer
Why does suicide become the only choice for some people? Why don’t they look for support? Could society be too busy to catch signs of what the person next to us is going through? How can we unite to support the people around us fighting a battle? It’s time we stop, think, and support every individual around us. Mental illness is a silent killer, and we need to be empathetic.
The Stressors
Expectations from life come in the form of jobs, family, academics, society, finances, and so on. While an individual makes every effort to give his best, somewhere along the way, they lose themselves to the pressures of life. The lack of satisfaction leads to a feeling of hollowness or deprivation of the absolute joy of life. People of all age groups go through these pressures at some point. Many factors contribute to adding stress, and if we are not emotionally strong enough to deal with it, it can silently push us to depression. How do we overcome these stressors?
The Fight
We all go through emotional ups and downs, and the sad part is that not everyone is emotionally and psychologically well-equipped to fight a depressive episode. What’s easy for some may be devastating for somebody else. Somebody might sleep and get over a challenging situation, yet others might take days or months to deal with a similar situation. It is imperative to understand that we are all built differently. Our Emotional Quotients are different!
The Support
The onus of supporting a depressed person does not always lie with the immediate family. Whenever I think of how we can help a depressed person, I visualize the entire society standing around to help.
It takes a village to raise a child! -African Proverb
It’s time we bring this into practice. Parents, siblings, grandparents, teachers, friends, relatives, cousins, and colleagues should all come together to help. Mental health has to be treated with empathy alone.
Many a time, all it takes to comfort a depressed person is one word of inspiration or a silent hug.
In my endeavor to save other Ananya’s, I have taken a step forward to share my experiences and start a foundation, ‘Ananya – A Foundation for Happiness’ that attempts to promote happiness and resilience in the lives of every individual. I want to ensure that no other parent loses their child to mental health illnesses. The foundation aims to create strong, factual awareness about mental health and help fight its stigmas through specially crafted programs for students and families. AFH also aims to normalize discussing and talking about mental health. The foundation’s mission is to reach out to the population from all age groups and introduce mental health as an essential factor contributing to an individual’s well-being.
The main objectives of the foundation are:
- Promote mental health as an essential factor at every stage and age of one’s life
- Educate people about different kinds of mental illnesses and ways to identify the signs and symptoms in themselves or their loved ones
- Spread awareness about suicide, especially among children, and prevent loss of life due to stress, depression, and anxiety
- Create a helpline channel to assist those whose emotional state is on the verge of getting worse
- Building custom programs and campaigns to promote the importance of self-happiness, resilience, and self-care
- To create a solid social media campaign to promote self-care, happiness, and awareness about mental well-being.
We achieve this by collaborating with educational institutions and addressing students, parents, and teachers under separate initiatives. We join hands with NGOs and other foundations to gain a wider reach. We also offer counseling sessions by experts for students or adults in need of support. We also introduce different art forms like music, dance, and painting as therapies.
Let us come out and share our stories and thoughts with others. Your story might be someone else’s inspiration to reach out and seek help.
Let us pledge to support each other and make sure we normalize mental health.
Together, we can all do better to create a brighter, healthier future for a generation of young people facing more challenges than ever before. Let’s come together as a village to support the Ananyas around us.
Author – Sneha Rao, Founder Director, Ananya – A Foundation for Happiness