Her eyes looked but saw nothing, the sides of her lips curled into a smile as if by habit on meeting a friend on the way to her cubicle.

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At her desk, she stared blankly into the screen. The happy-go-lucky Supriya had become a loner, and she would smile away concerned queries, by saying: “Just having a bad day.”

Deep within, she knew the pressures were too much to handle, the demands made on her time left her frustrated and often drained. She toyed with the idea of consulting a doctor. “It took me several weeks before I finally decided to get help,” Supriya says. In fact, in those weeks she read up on depression. “It was just a causal word someone threw at me, and I decided to see if it fit my condition,” she adds.

Only, she wasn’t aware of the severity. She’s clinically depressed — medication and therapy are helping her cope with her illness. But, “I have not told people at work”, she says, fearing that this could affect her career.

“The number of people seeking help has increased,” says Dr BN Gangadhar, professor of psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (Nimhans). However, he is quick to point out that, “the prevalence of mental morbidity has not changed over the years”. Even now, a sizeable number remains off the treatment radar.

Social stigma associated with any kind of mental illness is the prime reason people are reluctant to seek help, even in urban centres where awareness is relatively higher. Doctors point out that enough awareness was created in the public health regarding infectious and nutrition diseases and that brought the numbers down. In comparison, the burden of psychiatric disorders has increased significantly.

The WHO predicts that by 2020, depression will be the second largest contributor to ill health, second only to infectious diseases. Currently, depression is ranked fourth on the list of contributors of ill health.

Among the top 10 burden contributors among illnesses, four are psychiatric disorders, namely  depression, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder and suicide. Yet, we as a society are still not comfortable talking about mental illness.

“Currently, according to national statistics, we have 0.4 psychiatrists per one lakh population,” says Dr Gangadhar. He adds that according to a paper released by the government of India, there is a need for one psychiatrist per hundred thousand population, “This itself amounts to three fold increase in the number,” he says.