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I had always been a quiet person with a small friend circle. Life had had its ups and downs, but it was in the second year of college that my symptoms started to show up very strongly. I could not understand why I did not like going to college all of a sudden, could not understand why everything felt so dull, and why the day seemed to end on a sad note, no matter what I tried. I started to notice a stark change in my personality when, for two weeks, I struggled to sleep, barely ate, or got out of bed. I fought hard to go to therapy, but that was not very helpful immediately. I started medications, but living alone, the side effects were hard to manage on my own, especially for an unaware 19-year-old who could not make sense of the world around her. My friend asked me once and I wondered as well, “aisa toh kya hua tha tere saath.” Because it was true—people were going through so much more, but they seemed alright. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it.

As my health deteriorated further, my friends started to slip away as well.

Everyone wanted to have a good time; nobody really knew each other or understood what mental health was.

I tried everything to go back to a “normal” and functional life. Partying seemed to help for a while, but soon got out of hand. In the throes of depression and suicidal ideation, I would often find myself sobbing and crying myself to sleep. I felt lonely, isolated, and misunderstood. I was terrified and needed help, but didn’t know who to turn to. I distinctly remember one incident when I had been crying a lot at night continuously for a few days and my roommate, who happened to be my closest friend, got irritated and said, “Please go outside the house and cry, it is very difficult to sleep this way and we have college tomorrow.” I was shocked and hurt, but soon that became more of a regular thing. I would roam around my building at night, sit on a bench sometimes, or on the swings, and cry. My therapist suggested I go out for walks. That helped a little. I preferred staying outside and keeping things to myself after a certain point. It felt easier to embrace avoidance. I looked for ways to numb my feelings—sometimes turning to art, sometimes partying a little too hard. In deep depression, I spent the last two years of college. “You seem to have (symptoms of) 8 mental illnesses,” my psychiatrist said. I could not understand what was going on with me and why.

When the world didn’t know what to do with me

A suicide attempt in the second year of college at the age of 19–20 made things even more difficult. A little semester break helped, but as word spread around, people seemed to step away from me. I didn’t blame them really—we were all young undergraduate college students, fearful and unaware. I desperately wanted help and support and somebody who would listen and understand, or at least try, but that wasn’t happening. Medication wasn’t working either.

In my search for support and companionship, I somehow lost my focus and barely made it through the last year of college. Risk-taking behavior leading to incidents of sexual harassment, failed therapy, and an unhealthy “situationship” later, college finally ended. It was 2018, and I remember feeling relief and heaviness. College had ended, and I had no idea what to do with my life. It felt like the last few years had amounted to nothing. All I could remember was how difficult things had been and a sense of utter and complete hopelessness. On the last day before the exam break, I attempted to harm myself once again, immediately calling up a friend and asking for help. However, the damage was done.

Sent away without a say

My mother came down to see me again. My close friends expressed their disappointment and concern. My doctor didn’t know what to do next either. He simply gave up and said, “I have tried everything, let’s put her in a mental health institution and see how things go.”

Without my say, I was asked to finish my exams, and within a few days, I was sent to an institution in Maharashtra.

I was livid. I was angry and disappointed with my parents. I had just given more than six exams; clearly, I was lucid and cognitively functioning.

Inside the walls of a private institution

Here I was, a 21-year-old in a mental health institution. I remember stepping into the facility with my parents and granddad to recce it before getting admitted the next day. Things seemed okay from the outside. My parents kept getting emotional, but I was livid. I didn’t say anything. I had no complaints. I had simply accepted my fate at that time. A part of me felt like my parents deserved to suffer for willingly sending me to such a facility when maybe what I needed was a break, better therapy, and support. But here we were, in a space that did not allow shampoo or earrings or belts to reduce the possibility of suicide attempts. In this so-called protected environment, privacy was not an option, and you had no agency or control.

The institution was no joke. While it was very different from a state-run regional mental hospital, the private institute was much cleaner and well-managed and had more space in the living quarters for patients. The staff was slightly more humane, but it all depended on how functional and aware you were. You were subjected to a life of neglect and abuse if you were under the influence of heavy medication, had nobody to stand up for you or support you, did not have caretakers checking in on you and coming for scheduled visits, or if you were struggling with a disability and struggled to communicate. The usual admission period was three months; however, there were exceptions. No contact with the outside world was permissible until you were there. All you got was one 15-minute phone call with your family once in 15 days and a possible supply of snacks and books that would be vetted by the staff before they were handed over to you.

The people I met and what they carried

I was there for a month, but that was enough to have seen it all—the strict rules of no physical contact between opposite-sex individuals, the various kinds of issues individuals showed up with, doctors being asked to keep women sedated since their husbands had instructed them and paid extra to do so. Women getting put away so the men could get the children’s custody, women being left behind at the institute for years on end with their families never coming to pick them up, older women with Alzheimer’s and dementia being left behind all the while hoping that one of their eight sons would come pick them up. 

I remember this older woman who would often mistake one of us for her son or daughter-in-law or just stand by the gate, announcing that her sons must be coming to pick her up. She once approached me and asked if I needed help cooking her son’s favorite aloo-gobi for dinner. I remember not knowing how to react. I was about to clarify that I am not a member of her family and tell her what was real when one of my friends there came up to me and said, “Just go along with it for her sake. Just say yes. It will make her happy.” It was heart-wrenching and gut-wrenchingly difficult to process at the same time.

People who had overdosed or struggled with alcohol addiction, men who never uttered a single word, coke addicts, men who claimed to have beaten their wives but did not seem to register what they were saying, a few TV serial actors, siblings suffering intense domestic abuse who would only walk around in silence—I feel like in just a month I’d seen it all. We often did not even know the real reason people were there, but that became the focus of getting to know people. I remember, when people asked me why I was there and I revealed the real reason, even there people started giving me advice and said things like, “Why would you waste your life? There is so much more to existence. How can you be so careless about the gift of life?” It irritated me that even here, people didn’t understand suicidality or how to react to it.

However, luckily, I slowly got closer to a group of five other young individuals between the ages of 18 and 20 years. Suddenly, while things around me were still so hard and contact with the outside world was not allowed for the entire month, except for a television and a newspaper shared between about 70 people, I felt seen. I felt like I wasn’t alone. I felt like what I was going through wasn’t all that isolating, because here were five other strangers struggling with their own set of mental and emotional health struggles as well. 

We shared our struggles, talked about where we were from, looked after each other, gave each other confidence, and motivated each other to participate in the institution’s schedules and activities like yoga, running, and other sessions. Just the presence of each other made things a little easier. I made two close friends there. We talked about things that were bothering us, things that came up. Sometimes one of us motivated the other two to journal. Sometimes one of us motivated the other two to make art—we did finger painting. We still had moments when we hated everything around us. Everything felt alien, and we felt abandoned by our near and dear ones. We often sat and wondered what was happening outside. I remember it was the year that Avicii died, too. It was a weird time for all of us, but somehow the strength of community and interdependence got us through hell.

Learning to adapt for survival

My friend and another friend were among the last ones to arrive; hence, the others often advised us on navigating these spaces and preparing ourselves for therapy sessions and doctor appointments. I was trained in dealing with and responding to each individual, with whom to converse and whom I should ignore. They taught me to be kind in the face of strange situations. There was an individual there who would do strange things to get our attention. One time, as we sat in a circle in the garden, this person jumped around us like a frog simply to get our attention and be a part of the conversation. My impulse was to laugh, but my friends quietly asked me not to encourage it or mock him, explaining that everyone here had been through something we may not be aware of. Of course, these friends were not perfect either—often they were mean and singled people out—but together, as a group, we discussed these things and always tried to be as kind as we could. We tried to acknowledge our privilege—not everyone could function as well as we could then.

My friends aside, the institution did not have much to offer, and it had its challenges. I was not very happy with the therapy sessions, and the doctors had a tendency to overmedicate based on the symptoms shared during appointments. They did not think it was their responsibility to inform us about the names of our medicines or the dosages.

I had struggled with insomnia for more than two years, often not sleeping for more than two hours per day, and struggled with fatigue, moodiness, memory lapses, and brain fog due to the same. As a result, for the first few days, I was under observation in the so-called operation theater with all critical care patients. Several patients were paralyzed, and the room would constantly smell like urine and feces. There would be constant movement, and doctors would stay up for observation.

Feeling safe is a prerequisite to being able to sleep, at least for me. This situation did not help much. Along with this, the doctor put me on a very heavy sleeping medication. When I was finally allowed to sleep in my room, the sleep medication was so strong that within 30 minutes of its consumption, I found myself unable to walk to my room on my own, and my friends often had to carry me to my bed. Moreover, I would wake up every morning to find I had wet my bed. The medication was knocking me out cold, such that I wouldn’t even be able to get up to use the washroom.

Moreover, due to the possibility of suicide attempts, the washroom and the room did not have a lock. Even in my allowed room, falling asleep felt scary and unsafe, especially in a facility with other individuals struggling with mental health issues. Anyone could open the door and walk into my room—that was not a great feeling. One of my friends in the boys’ unit had even woken up to an unknown co-patient sleeping on the floor of his room when he woke up at night. This incident scared me. It scares me to date.

Sometimes, even today, I find it hard to sleep as my mind is convinced that anyone could enter my room at any time or that someone might be watching me.

Not only was this degrading, but it made me question my reality at that time. It made me wonder if I was a lesser human because I took these steps. I often wondered if this was what I deserved for making mistakes and choosing unhealthy coping mechanisms. “Do I deserve this? How long till I go home?” These were some questions that were always on my mind. These questions troubled my friends as well, some of whom spent 3–6 months in there.

Luckily, I was able to get out within a month. To get out, my friends and I decided that I had to use my high-functioning mental health and fast recovery as a means to get out sooner. For better or worse, I changed how I talked about my symptoms, especially in terms of intensity. After talking to my therapist, who was monitoring my progress as well, I honestly offered feedback about my sleep medication. I expressed a desire to work on my sleep schedule organically with the help of diligent engagement in yoga and workouts offered at the institution. With each consultation, I reported an exaggerated improvement. I tried to get more clarity about the goals of my recovery in therapy and worked as hard as I could. But I couldn’t have done any of this without the support of my friends and well-wishers.

The woman in the red dress

Institutions are a tricky space, rife with exploitation. I remember this particular incident, which will remain engraved in my head. I was banished to the operating theater as a punishment this one time when a beautiful middle-aged woman in her late 40s entered wearing sunglasses. She was in a short red dress and seemed to be talking to me, but she could only manage to utter gibberish. The staff tried calming her down, but she refused to lie or sit on a bed. She kept trying to interact with people in the room. When no one responded or supported her, she was sedated with an injection. She lay down, still muttering under her breath, but unfortunately, her words did not make sense. It seemed like some drugs had interacted with her speech to affect her like this. Soon, the curtains around her bed were pulled in place. When they were pulled back, she was in a hospital gown. Her hands and legs were tied up. The staff attempted to feed her throughout the day, but she refused to eat. She was force-fed. Every time we came to take our medication, I glanced over toward her bed and found her tied up and being fed while she lay unconscious for days.

That weekend, the doctor visited, and I overheard him discussing how hygiene needed to be maintained. Still, the woman was to be kept unconscious as per her husband’s instructions, who was also the one paying for her treatment. While I didn’t catch much of that conversation, I realized something was fishy. Several other individuals tried to put the pieces together, but it was all unclear. When the lady finally regained consciousness after a week or so, she asked my friend what the source of the bruises around her wrists and ankles was. It hurt thinking about what the woman was going through without her knowledge. It also made me realize how important it was for an individual with a social justice perspective to be present in private and public settings to monitor such incidents in mental health institutions.

Finding purpose in a place I never chose

This motivated me to pursue a degree as a mental health professional. After being released from the institute, I kept in touch with some people. I learned how to regulate my emotions. I still have my ups and downs, but I always get back on my feet.

At the age of 28, I am now working as a mental health therapist to bring a social justice perspective to mental health support in individual and community settings. My experience at the institute, no matter how difficult, made me realize the importance of community mental health support and awareness. Sometimes, we find our purpose in the places we least expect. Through my work, I hope to spread empathy. I can make people feel seen and facilitate the creation of safe spaces where individuals can be themselves and share their struggles openly without the fear of being judged.