At Your Age

A few weeks ago, I was unwell nothing dramatic, a whole lot of different symptoms a little serious for my age which basically scared me. So I did what you generally do. I went to the doctors, an ENT, a cardiologist, a general physician, a couple of others. I carried my reports from one room to the other hoping someone would find the root cause.

What they found instead, or what most of them settled on was stress or anxiety. The words appeared often enough that they stopped feeling like medicine and started feeling like a shrug. After hearing it from enough doctors, I started getting irritated every time I heard the word “stress”. 

I want to be precise here, I am not saying stress isn't real. It could have actually been contributing to whatever was happening to me. What I could not stop noticing was the way the word was used. 

I went to a general physician, my reports spread in front of him, and he looked at them, looked at me, and asked what was going on. I told him I wasn't sure and that I was scared. He asked if I had any stress. I said I didn't think so. In my head I was thinking not beyond the regular stuff. College, deadlines, things to do, things to worry about. Just normal life. 

He wasn't interested in that answer. "What stress could you have?" he said. What stress could you have, at your age, compared to what the older generation has carried. I agreed I did not have any stress but, would that be true for millions of others my age? I do not think so, exams, peer groups, looking at their parents, everything is a stress these days. I experience stress too, but I am fortunate enough that the same stress also gives me something productive to work toward whereas many people may not have that outlet.

The generational sentiment does not bother me. I have heard it multiple times. What bothers me is the room it happened in, because this was a hospital, and the doctor had a degree on the wall. The whole dynamic of that interaction was supposed to be different, that's what you expect from a doctor. I was not in my neighbourhood park listening to uncles saying this generation is weak. I was sitting in front of a doctor. I should not have had to convince a doctor that being young does not automatically mean that I do not think, that it does not mean I am fine.

He didn't do that. He used stress the way a lot of people use it, as an explanation  for things they'd rather not take seriously but the difference is that he was a doctor and I was a patient who had come in scared and left with nothing except the distinct feeling that my fear was a kind of imposition.

We talk about mental health a lot more: campaigns, awareness days, helplines, YouTube, Instagram, newspapers everywhere. And in a hospital in a tier-2 city, a physician was suspecting stress as the only diagnosis left for a young patient whose reports said nothing was wrong.

I don't think he was malicious. Maybe he was tired, or busy, or genuinely convinced that the younger generation has invented its own suffering, and I believe a lot of doctors in a lot of cities probably operate exactly this way. That's the problem.

October 10th is World Mental Health Day, and I imagine there will be posts and posters and conversations about destigmatization. I'll probably read some of them. I'll probably think about that room more than I think about the posts and campaigns. Mostly, I'll remember how it felt to be scared and not feel taken seriously.