India, Oct. 7 -- Every year, October 10 is celebrated as World Mental Health Day. This day underscores how we need mental health efforts at both individual and societal level so that the right care becomes accessible and affordable for all in a timely way. However, over the last five years, I have felt that when it comes to psychotherapy, the field appears to be in the midst of a crisis in India. There was little awareness about mental health when I began my practice in the early 2000s. Over the years that has changed significantly and the stigma around seeking help for mental and emotional issues has reduced considerably and many more people are seeking help now, which is great. But this has also led to a blurring of the distinction between qualified therapists and pop psychologists. Social media is now replete with astrologers, spiritual gurus, people with one-year diplomas in counselling getting clubbed with psychotherapists. This takes away from the years of education, training and supervision that psychotherapists undergo to help their clients with evidence-based scientific approach and healing. India urgently needs properly licenced and regulated mental health professionals with a high legal and ethical bar that will allow clients to make informed choices. The other disturbing trend that I notice is that since the pandemic, especially, we have become hyper-focussed on 'self-care' as a tool to address one's mental health. This has led to a shift towards individualism, and the idea of 'self-care has become greatly misunderstood and even commercialised. As human beings-be it in our friendships, relationships or work, we need a balance between independence and inter-dependence. If we continue focusing only on self-care, then our ideas of boundaries, what it means to be intentional, extending generosity to others get impacted. This, in turn, is leading to more and more people feeling disconnected and experiencing isolation. Being in relationships of any kind requires understanding and a certain giving of ourselves-it's like a dance where sometimes we will lead and at other times it will be the partner who will lead. In this excessive emphasis on the 'self' we are forgetting the importance of influences, community support and social connection for our wellbeing. In our pursuit of freedom, autonomy, we are letting go of what it means to invest in relationships, to care deeply, and hold space for others. While everyone today seems to have the 'right' vocabulary, a lot of conversations has begun to feel contrived and inauthentic. The proliferation of information around mental health on social media has created a monster where I feel large chunks of therapy session are spent in helping clients to just separate right information from mere armchair expertise. Words like personality disorder, OCD, paranoia are bandied about casually in judgement when they are, in fact, serious medical disorders requiring diagnosis and medication. This quick judgement often has a cascading effect with people exhibiting polarized views, low tolerance levels, rigidity, and greatly reduced openness and curiosity. When this happens, it becomes tricky to build a world that is infused with hope and trust towards fellow beings. The World Mental Health Day, I hope, can become a signpost for us to look at mental health from a genuine spirit of inquiry, discernment and a reminder to ourselves that we do need communities, social bonding and hence have to learn to co-exist with others....