A compassionate society is judged not by how it treats the powerful but by how it treats the vulnerable. Mental illness is a human condition deserving understanding, care and dignity
A recent advertisement by a cement company features actor Ranbir Kapoor locked in a bare room, speaking incoherently and behaving irrationally. It ends with Kapoor, now dressed as a doctor, reassuring the audience that the person inside cannot escape because the room is built with strong cement. The commercial may have been intended as harmless humour. But it reflects a disturbing insensitivity towards mental illness. It turns mental illness into a spectacle for entertainment. Behaviour associated with psychological distress is caricatured and presented as comedy. This reinforces the deeply damaging stereotype that people with mental-health conditions are objects of ridicule rather than individuals deserving empathy, treatment and dignity.
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