Shaheen Bhatt wants us to talk about our feelings more
The newly minted author is using her book, I’ve Never Been (Un) Happier, to banish taboos around mental health
Shaheen Bhatt and her sister Alia were watching home videos from their childhood. Looking at their memories come to life, Alia had one question for her older sister: “How is it that I became the actor and not you?”
Born into a family of ‘gregarious’ celebrities, Shaheen herself was an outgoing child. But she began to feel a difference as she hit her teens, becoming reserved and quiet. It was a change so stark that sometimes she doesn’t recognise herself from back then.
Her struggle with depression is the main focus of her heart-wrenching memoir I’ve Never Been (un)Happier — (released as an e-book in October 2018 and now out in paperback) a journey that began on Instagram when the now 31-year-old screenwriter and author first went public with her clinical depression diagnosis.
“I was looking for pictures to post because I hadn’t posted in a long time and I was looking for happy pictures. I realised I’m not feeling happy so why am I looking for happy pictures? That’s when I decided to talk about how I’m actually feeling,” Shaheen Bhatt recounts of her life-changing decision in 2016.
“It was very positively received and resonated with a lot of people. Then, I wrote a couple of articles and Penguin approached me to write the book. I’m an advocate of sharing and I jumped at it. I felt that if a post had made such a difference, imagine how much of a difference a full-length book could actually make.”
Writing the book was a cathartic experience. One that “was difficult because I was going back to things I didn’t want to but rewarding — it was like intensive therapy.”
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Formally diagnosed at 18, she’d been living with it for far longer, wrestling with symptoms since she was 13. Though coping with depression as a teenager was a confusing, difficult time, she was lucky enough to find a support system in family and friends. Says Shaheen, “Having a set of people who understand you is fundamental. Even though my mother didn’t understand at the start, she wanted to learn. We learnt together, because I didn’t know what was happening to myself and neither did she.”
Her friends helped her feel safe and encouraged her to open up, though she admits “it’s still hard to talk about my bad days, even though I share on a public platform on a day-to-day basis.”
She lives with her sister and says even on days when she’s feeling particularly low, wondering why someone would want to be around her, family-time makes her feel calmer, even if it’s just her leaving her room to go outside and sit with her sister. “It’s just comforting to know that they love me and want to be around me.”
According to a study reported conducted for the NCMH (National Care Of Medical Health), there is an extreme shortage of mental health workers like psychologists, psychiatrists, and doctors in India — as reported in 2014, it was as low as ”one in 100,000 people”.
This despite the fact that at least 6.5 per cent of the population suffer from some serious mental health disorder. That’s 78 million Indians, if you’re keeping count.
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Shaheen Bhatt is now championing open dialogue about depression and mental health disorders, through her platform Here Comes the Sun. “Once I started talking about it, every single person to me said ‘you know, I’m going through something as well’,” she recalls incredulously. “I don’t know if it’s a sign of the times that we’re living in or what. Depression is not a one-size-fits-all illness and the diversity of its markers make it that much harder to identify. But the biggest takeaway is that everyone needs support, and that they need to share.”
I’ve Never Been Unhappier is available on Amazon.in