Brain Behaviour Research Foundation of India | Blog

These days headlines in daily newspapers have become quite predictable. Everywhere and in all walks of life, people are incurring losses, be it financial, job loss due to economic recession, deaths of loved ones due to pandemic or just a crazy forest fire burning down lovely homes, like in America. This is what we have been hearing from people or media these days. It appears, as if, suffering has become the new pandemic. The psychological cost behind these loses is unimaginable. Degrading mental health of people, in general, is evident. The big question is,whether we are making ourselves psychologically resilient to face these loses or not? Will there be a psychological pandemic after this? There is no doubt that the sufferings are immense and in most of the cases unrepairable. Lack of advance psychological preparedness among people is one of the reasons. In fact, nature’s fury has just caught all of us unprepared. Our psychological vulnerabilities were exposed, forcing us to feel depr

It is important for us to acknowledge how women and men are not only different in their physical characteristics but even in their psychological makeup. Women's and men's brains are wired differently and they process stimuli and information in their own distinct ways when dealing in relationships, expressing their feelings, and reacting to stress. Thus, gender is a critical determinant in issues related to mental health. Various psychiatric studies indicate that men experience a significantly higher number of certain mental health issues than women, yet community studies of mental health find that women have reported worse mental health scores instead of men. There is a significant correlation between women’s mental and reproductive health that has been finally receiving attention in these recent years. Reproductive health conditions are likely to impose a burden on women’s health. Apart from these biological, “lifestyle” and individual risk factors, the focus also needs to be

One day while walking along the road, I suddenly felt short of breath, while gasping for air, my mind immediately connected the shortness of breath with one of the symptom suggesting to the possibility of having COVID-19. Feeling anxious about it, I spent few moments in reckless rumination of the possible catastrophic consequences that can follow from here. I imagined all the scenarios that can take place, from my own death due to COVID-19 to even the death of my loved ones. All this happened within a span of few minutes. Any one reading this might make fun of this, even I got worried about my own negative thoughts. What happened above was not some abnormality of the mind or some neurological defect. It is just a marvelous machine working at its best, in this case, the brain. During the above episode, my mind was just reading the normal body reactions in an exaggerated way to the extent that I ended up doing self-diagnosis and also imagined all the worst outcomes. These negative though

Intolerance of uncertainty is often representative of tension disorders that range from generalized anxiety to obsessive-compulsive disorder. COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the uncertainty over the economy, employment, finances, relationships, and in fact, physical well being. We have different capacities for tolerating the different levels of uncertainty in life. Some people enjoy taking risks and living unpredictable lives, while others find the randomness of life deeply distressing. But everyone has their limit. If you are feeling overwhelmed by uncertainty and worry, it is important to know that you’re not alone; many people are in identical situation at present. In an interesting survey by the People Management and also the CIPD, supporting people’s mental status and well-being is the foremost challenge for nearly 70% of employers. Macro-levels of humanity apart, people’s mental status is getting affected on the individual level in India, due to the following: 1. Anxiety over

  “Trauma creates change you don’t choose. Healing creates change you do choose” – Michelle Rosenthal Disasters and crises seem to be an inevitable part of the world we live in today. Some or the other part of our planet is constantly facing large-scale and small-scale crisis. India has been no different and has been frequently witnessing natural disasters such as earthquakes, flash floods, landslides,tsunamis, cyclones as well as terrorist attacks in various parts of the nation.The Global Climate Risk Index Report 2019 lists India as the 14 th most vulnerable country in the world in relation to weather related events(Eckstein, D., Hutfils, M. L., &Winges, M., 2018). Such disastrous and traumatic events often resultin displacement of people and communities,carrying with them tremendous emotional, social and physical consequences. Such traumatic events leave people with grief, a sense of shock anda fear of the unknown future.Trauma can also result from being kidnapped, taken ho