WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY, 10 October

Few observations and the understanding from those will help us to understand mental health on this day of 10th October which is observed as World Mental Day.

1. Emotions, happiness, and anger are proven by biotech and infotech to be the results of biochemical activation in the brain cells. These are caused by the release of chemicals (hormones) by perceiving observations of surroundings (outer world). Perception and thought processes are thus the roads to good mental health. So the lemma one is:

Emotions = biochemical reactions in the brain cell ... (1)

Do humans only experience an emotion or non-humans too feel emotional. Does your pet dog come running wagging its tail when you come back home from the office? You do not find a similar reaction from a street dog. You notice similar actions from your pet cat but not from a cat sitting on the fence. So do we mean that emotions are restricted only to humans and their pet animals? Is that true?

How many types of living organisms have a soul and how many of them experience emotion? We humans have been convinced by our spiritual leaders that: 

• The soul is free from pains and pleasures. It changes the body just like the body changes clothes.

• Living beings feel pain because of physical injuries as well as mental injuries. 

 

Psychologists carry out experiments to understand behavioral aspects by using pigs, rats, and other animals in the laboratories. The reflex actions experiment carried out by Ivan Pavlov has confirmed that the brains of dogs (non-humans) also get affected by relating recall of past views, and sub-conscious listening of sounds. So if non-humans get depressed under unfavorable conditions than it is concluded that humans will experience depression under similar conditions. If a drug is found antivirus in the bodies of animals then it is concluded that the same drugs will be effective to human bodies too. These are small examples to get convinced that “soul is not human-specific”. So the lemma two is:

Living beings = emotions ... (2) 

2. Let us recall the action-reaction law better known as the third law of Newton. Every action has got an equal and opposite reaction. So the lemma three is:

           Living or non living = action reaction (karma) ... (3)

The morning news informed us that today is the world mental health day, 10 October. The news also showed results of some surveys that about 50% of the youth of our country are under depression because of reasons like (a) worries for the future, (b) closure of schools, colleges, and workplaces, (c) loss of jobs due to covid19 pandemic, and (d) many other issues that are within the sphere of our control and some beyond the sphere of influence and control.

           When we understand the relationships in equations 1, 2, and 3, we must take care of our surroundings and all other biosystems in it to maintain mental balance. After all we humans have the highest responsibility to keep the emotion of every other living being so that we all can remain mentally healthy.