Mental Health, Sleeping disorder and technology

The recent suicide of Sushant Singh Rajput, an effective and youthful famous actor has stirred the country. All things considered, how would someone be able to who apparently had everything need to end everything ? Reality we don't have the foggiest idea, presumably he was suffering from depression. Depression is a severe stage when we talk about mental health. Mental health includes our emotional, psychological and social well being. This pandemic has taken our attention not only towards physical health but also towards mental health. Mental well-being incorporates our enthusiastic, mental, and social prosperity. It influences how we think, feel, and act. It additionally decides how we handle pressure, identify with others, and settle on decisions. Mental well-being is significant at each phase of life, from youth and pre-adulthood through adulthood.

 

According to WHO, approximately 7.5% population of India, which accounts to 9 crore people, suffer through mental health problems. Not everybody reaches the stage of depression but they might some other problems like panic, anxiety, insomnia etc. Every fifth Indian suffers Anxiety and almost every other Indian has reported about sleep disorder. We all are aware that how important is sleep to us.

 

Do we give a thought why we all this is happening, why we are not able to sleep during the night and we have to use our phones when all other are asleep. I recently went through all these things and studying about this takes me to the conclusion that using phones/tablets is not what makes us help fall asleep infact excessive exposure is one of the main reason why nowadays most us are exposed to sleeping disorder. Using TVs, tablets, smartphones, laptops, or other electronic devices before bed delays your body’s internal clock (a.k.a., your circadian rhythm), suppresses the release of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin, and makes it more difficult to fall asleep. This is largely due to the short-wavelength, artificial blue light that’s emitted by these devices. The more electronic devices that a person uses in the evening, the harder it is to fall asleep or stay asleep. Besides increasing your alertness at a time when you should be getting sleepy, which in turn delays your bedtime, using these devices before turning in delays the onset of REM sleep, reduces the total amount of REM sleep, and compromises alertness the next morning. Over time, these effects can add up to a significant, chronic deficiency in sleep. This is the reason which applies to teenagers and adulthood. What is more dangerous is when we talk about the kids mainly the infants. Another study suggests that we should not expose screen to infants below 2 years. This directly effects the growth of infants, even a single minute exposure to them is harmful for the proper development.

 

Now if we come to the reason why all this happen, we must think about the development of brain. As we all have studied that human has been evolved from the spices of monkey and it took million of years from being a monkey species to change into the present human. Human mind was eventually developed in those million years. Humans used to be in the state of rest at most of the times in a day, the only time when the brain was stressed was the time they had to hunt for food otherwise brain was not at all stressed and remained in the state of rest. But just before the beginning of 21^st century we were mainly exposed to the use of technology and the recent 20-25 years have changed the way of living we used to live earlier. Even though when we think that watching videos on youtube or any other OTT platform, we are stressing our mind as well as our eyes. We are almost heading back and back in the terms of development of mind as the exposure to the screen reduces the efficiency of the brain.

 

We must think about the fact that we have created the gadgets to ease our life and the gadgets must serve to us as servant instead of we getting bound to the gadgets and have started serving them. Peace of mind is an eventual process and self restricting ourselves to the exposure will help us to achieve the ultimate motive. As in the present world we are bound to use the gadgets and cannot remove it completely we must learn the “Art of silence” which simply means absolute silence for at least 15 minutes. Point here to note is it must not be confused with meditation,  this process is just silence, no thought should prevail our mind, we just have to remain quite and listen to the sound of the soul. Especially in this time of pandemic, when everywhere else in the world a chaos is going on, this art of silence will help us alot to achieve the peace of mind and this peace of mind will result in the mental wellness (also to help us having a good sleep). Peace of mind can also be achieved when we care for others, not just family, I am talking about others we don’t have a link. Helping the people starving for food in this time will serve the purpose.

 

So, we must help others in order to help ourselves and shall reduce the exposure to screen to become mentally fit.