Figuring out answers to such questions, living and working in a world that is often unfriendly and sometimes outright discriminatory, can mean a life lived in the shadows. For the Indian LGBTQIA+) community (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex, Asexual and other), in addition to the social and familial prejudices, the legal framework is oppressive, leaving little room to find safety and protection. Conflicts between one’s internal reality and the way the world is, can be a source of major distress [1]. We are aware of many instances of suicide and suicide attempts among community members that were prompted by such distress.

While support groups and queer-friendly counsellors do exist in India, particularly in the metros, there is a need for more support including channels of trained peer supporters in the community.

Peer Support may be defined as the help and support that people with lived experience of a minority group are able to give to one another [2]. It may be social, emotional or practical support but importantly this support is mutually offered and reciprocal, allowing peers to benefit from the support whether they are giving or receiving it. It is built on the premise of empathy and personal experience.

Peer support and professional mental health support can complement each other through two-way referrals [3]. Increasingly, LGBTIQA+ community groups are receiving referrals from psychiatrists and counseling psychologists who ask their clients to reach out to such groups to obtain peer support and reduce their sense of isolation.

With the goal of building a strong peer support system in mind, a group of organisations and collectives based in Bangalore and Chennai, including professional counsellors, peer supporters and diversity/inclusion professionals, have taken the following
steps:

1. Initiated 3-4 hour workshops  for LGBTIQA+ community members and allies to orient them on peer counselling principles: The workshops have been conducted in Bangalore (January 7, 2018) and Chennai (February 25, 2018) so far. Participation is capped at 20 per workshop, and is open to those with prior exposure to providing peer support, as well as those who would like to engage in the future. Workshops are multilingual and held in accessible venues. At present they are funded by community donations and a participant fee (sliding scale, including waiver, available).

2. Building a referral network of peer support individuals: A WhatsApp^TM group has been created with all the peer supporters who attend the workshop and agree to be part of the network, to ensure that there is an ongoing effort to reach out to people who could benefit from support. The group also intends to function as a safe space for people to exchange best practices around peer support and build their capability as peer supporters.

Organising entities include InnerSight, Diversity Dialogues, and Orinam. The Chennai workshop was co-organised with Nirangal and focused on the role of peer counselling within the larger crisis support framework. Reading materials created to help build understanding around peer support may be downloaded from https://test.orinam.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Feb25_2018_LGBTIQA- Peer-
CounsellingHandouts.pdf

Note: These community-initiated workshops are not the first of their kind. To our knowledge, previous workshops of this nature have been organised in Chennai (2008, 2009), Kochi (2016) and Imphal (2017). The present set of workshops has been motivated by an increase in individuals seeking support, mobility of individuals especially among southern states – that calls for a referral network of peer counsellors (in addition to those involved in crisis intervention), and several reported instances of suicide and suicide attempts in the past year.

References

[1] Natarajan, Mahesh. 2017. Coming out vs Fitting in: Mental health and the LGBT person in India. White Swan Foundation. Online at
http://www.whiteswanfoundation.org/article/coming-out- vs-fitting- in-mental- health-and-the-lgbt-person-in-india/

[2] Mental Health Foundation. year unknown. Peer Support. Online at https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/p/peer-support

[3] Pattojoshi, A., BB Pattanayak, and L. Ramakrishnan. 2017. LGBT Mental Health: The Way Forward.The Odisha Journal of Psychiatry 2017 issue: pp. 2-8. Online at http://odishajp.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/JOURNAL-BOOK-2ND-EDETION-NOVEMBER-2017-16-Version.pdf

I’ll begin by quoting Jonathan Rodrigues who wrote this piece on suicide in The Hindu:

“Many teenagers die of failure of what I would call an ‘attempt to threaten suicide.’ Their main intention is to deliver a message or a threat demanding attention and love, but they eventually succumb to the tortures they force on their bodies. Suicidal behaviour whether attempted or threatened must be taken seriously and dealt with maturely. It should not be treated as taboo anymore. There is need for discussing the concept of suicide in schools and colleges.”

I come from Tuticorin, India. Growing up, I didn’t know of any gay people, let alone role models. I wasn’t out when I was in high school, but I got bullied for a host of other reasons. During my final years there, I felt lonely and aloof and  I sat through the day, imagining things to write about when I was at home. Computers were my escape from reality. I wrote about technology. I had a personal blog. I connected with tech enthusiasts from across the world. Although my life then was filled with purpose, I still felt alienated as I couldn’t find anyone like me in school. By the time I was done with high school, the awareness of my sexuality had existed in me for years and I was able to fully understand and accept my identity. I thought I was all set for the life ahead of me.

And then I moved out of my town to go to college. The first two years were fine. I made good friends along the way. Then, I fell in love with someone straight and that ripped my heart apart. That was my first real taste of rejection and it was painful emotionally and physically. At that age, love that isn’t reciprocal can make you want to kill yourself. I fell into depression in my last two years of college.

I thought I spent those years wandering around doing nothing, but in hindsight, I actually did a ton of things to put myself back together. I thought I’d share them with you, because you might find them useful when the going gets tough.

• I built a personal support system. I’ve never had trouble finding friends (despite my own bouts of loneliness in both high school and college). By the time I finished college, I was out to around 20 people, including my Dad. I did not plan on building such a circle, but it happened. I had a straight roommate who was also my 4 AM counselor. I had a classmate who was aware of my sexuality and offered reassuring advice when I needed it. Whenever I visited home, there was a childhood friend who stood by me. A lot of others were always there for me no matter what. I actually have a WhatsApp group for my best friends and that’s my go-to place for venting. I know it seems like overkill, and I am sure I’ve taken too much of their time, but truth be told, I wouldn’t have survived if they hadn’t listened to me. Trust me: you’ll also find people like them whose support is priceless.

• I jumped at every chance I got to socialize. Until college, I always kept to myself, and there’s nothing I enjoyed more than being alone and contemplating random things. But after my depression episode began, every time I got invited to hangout with my friends, I forced myself to go. I made sure I wasn’t alone and that helped me put off suicide. The idea is to surround yourself with people you love, and trick your brain from going down that road.

• I sought professional help. Though I tried everything I could, sometimes things went way out of control. I’d be depressed one day but feel deeply elated the next and I wondered if I was doing irreparable damage to my mental health. Just being with friends and leaning on them wasn’t enough, so I found an LGBT-friendly counselor in Chennai and sought her help. Although she didn’t have a magic wand, her advice helped and she connected me with organizations in the city that worked on LGBT issues.

• I read ‘It Gets Better.’ The book had real-life accounts of LGBT people from across the world. Granted, I’ve read a lot about queer issues online, but there’s something that stood out among the anecdotes in the book: ‘it doesn’t get better; you get stronger.’ I couldn’t agree more. I don’t think there was a huge change in public perception in India of LGBT issues; what changed was me. I’ve grown stronger. You’re might encounter homophobic laws like 377, but you’ll grow a thick skin and learn to deal with hate like I did. Just remember: what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger

(On a side note: if you’re a parent or a friend of someone who is constantly feeling suicidal, I urge you to read this piece from March 2013 that was published in The Hindu. The real reasons why people try to do what they do, are clearly laid out in this article. I also suggest reading this comic on depression by Hyperbole and a Half because that I am sure it will resonate with you).

Orinam editors’ note: This is one of a series of articles on Orinam that discuss living and coping with depression. Also see Pink Me’s essay No Matter What Happens, and Vinodhan’s essays Storms Without Warnings and Spells and Charms.  For readers who would like to learn more about coping with depression, a guide on mental health for LGBT people developed by Ireland’s Health Service Executive mental health project is available here. Additional resources are being developed by Orinam and will soon be available here.

I’m going to mention a few things that have helped get through this hard phase of mine, in the hopes that it might help someone else.

1) Don’t give up: There’s a beautiful saying, “After the darkest night comes the brightest dawn” . I was lucky enough to stumble onto this wonderful piece of wisdom at the onset of my most horrible years. I have clung onto that with everything I had and it has seen me through to the other side. It is a matter of holding on with everything you have and more and riding the storm. It will get better.

2) My Faith: The grace of God saved me from committing suicide. Slowly but surely I started to place my trust in the Almighty and was able to save myself from insanity. Whatever you believe in, Ram or Allah or Jesus or Nature or anything else, stick with it. Don’t let go of it just because you are having a hard time. Faith in something is better than no faith at all.

3) Find someplace to hibernate: One of the first things I did,was to move back home to the safety and comfort of my folk’s place. There is nothing like being somewhere, that gives you security and peace and warmth. And then hibernate. I would imagine I was a bear and that all the I had to do was sleep and eat and sleep again. And that’s what I did. For 3 months I did not leave my house other than very occasionally. I slept most of the time . I did feel like a bum, but I realised that my body, mind, soul and spirit needed it.

4) Try and look to the future: No matter how bad or dark or depressing the present is, it will not be the same way in the next month or year. It is very difficult to put ourselves in a positive frame of mind, but that’s what we must try to do. Positive thoughts and actions are so essential to help us move on and get through what we are going through right now.

5) Cheer yourself up: It is human nature to expect other people to cheer you up when you’re down. But for how long. Make an effort to get better yourself. Exercise, watch a dozen comedies,read a book, meditate, pray. Do whatever needs to be done to get yourself out of that sad and hopeless frame of mind. You are your own master. So act like it.

I hope this helps. Is there anything else that, you dear readers, have done that has helped? Do leave us a comment and let us know.

Orinam editors’ note: This is one of a series of articles on Orinam that discuss living and coping with depression. Also see Vinodhan’s essays Storms Without Warnings and Spells and Charms.  For readers who would like to learn more about coping with depression, a guide on mental health for LGBT people developed by Ireland’s Health Service Executive mental health project is available here. Additional resources are being developed by Orinam and will soon be available here.

Physical Activity: Were I to be truly honest, I should have titled this “Exercise.” But I don’t always manage to motivate myself to exercise, so I decided to be honestly vague! What I manage to do every day is to get some form of physical activity which makes me sweat. Now, in a place like Madras, it is incredibly easy to sweat. You just have to be. So don’t fool yourself. At least, do a nice, brisk walk. If you can find enough motivation every day to work out, there’s nothing like it!

My discovery here is that finding the motivation to step out for some physical exercise is the most difficult part. Once I manage to push myself to do it, or someone else succeeds in kicking me out of the house for a little walk/ hike/ run, things get easier after that. I have spoken to a few other people who suffer from clinical depression, and they all seem to have similar experiences.

Even a little bit of the morning sun might be helpful. I find that my days are significantly better when I get some sun in the morning. Recently, I spent some time in the mountains, and there were added incentives to a morning walk. Everything was just overwhelmingly beautiful. Catching the gentle, morning sun on my skin was something I started looking forward to. In Madras, I wake up when the power goes off in the morning and the ceiling fan stops swirling the same stale air about. Also, cities in the morning scare me with all their haste and rush, unless I manage to wake up really early and step out before the traffic starts.

Seek Therapeutic Help: Here’s the truism – the first challenge is to accept that you might have depression or related issues. Most of us do not think twice about going to a doctor to help ourselves out of a physical ailment. But when it comes to issues of the mind, we feel it is entirely up to us to deal with it. We are also conditioned that way. Not only are we often told that it is all a question of attitude and of altering the state of mind, it is also drummed into our heads that, come what may, we should just brace ourselves up and face everything with great fortitude. Well, very admirable. But let’s get some perspective here. We are talking about the will to get through each day here, the will to get off the bed and walk the few steps to bathroom to brush one’s teeth. We are talking about not knowing what one is fighting. So, if you choose to seek some help, it is entirely your business, and you should commend yourself for opting to take good care of yourself.

It helps to talk to a good mental health professional even to understand what ‘depression’ really means in mental health terms. We use the ‘depression’ in a variety of ways every day. We watch a bad game and remark, “Oh this is depressing.” Some people do not read the newspapers first thing in the morning, because they find them “depressing.” We also feel “depressed” after a bad exam. The clinical kind of depression we are talking about here is not the same as any of these. While these are all responses to certain concrete external circumstances, clinical depression arises largely because of decrease in the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain. There are social, familial, and “nurture” factor, but the biological factor seems to be irreducible.

Like many others, I have found a combination of medication and therapy helpful. As I say this, I am conscious that this involves money. But my suggestion to you is, please do not let this deter you right away from even exploring your options. Speak to someone in the community; find out what kind of support is available. You might be surprised.

When I went to a therapist for the first time, I expected to lie on a couch. Actually, I didn’t know the differences between a therapist, a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst. I still don’t have a clear idea, but since I work with a therapist as well as a psychiatrist, I have sort of inferred on my own that while a psychiatrist is a medically qualified doctor who can treat clinical mental illnesses with medication and other approved modes of treatment, a therapist is trained to help people by allowing them to talk through issues and to facilitate the healing process by non-medical means. It could be art therapy, psychodrama, etc.

Remember, not all depression needs to be treated medically. Only severe forms of clinical depression are treated with medication.

Don’t self-medicate: Please don’t ever self-medicate. An anti-depressant or a mood stabilizer that works for someone may not work for you. You might need your specific combination, which only a psychiatrist might be able to assess and prescribe for. Also, once you have started taking medication and you are beginning to feel better, do not think it is alright to stop taking it. That is not going to help at all. Please don’t attach any stigma to taking medication for a mental ailment. Not everything is under our control, and there is absolutely no shame in accepting help.

Don’t over-commit at work: Oh, I had to learn this the hard way. If you have clinical depression-related issues, your productivity levels probably fluctuate more than they do for someone who doesn’t have the issue. So what happens often is that we don’t get much done when we are going through our phases. Once we are out of them and feeling better, we have work to catch up with. Most unfortunately, the world out there valorizes this notion of productivity, which reduces us all to mere machines turning out work at some expected rate. We don’t have to subscribe to that, but if we are in jobs that demand an optimum level of productivity all the time, there is not much one can do about it. However, we can at least not make things worse for ourselves.

For instance, when you recover from a phase of depression and try to catch up with work, do not be consumed by guilt for having a backlog of work. Of course, you will feel bad. Just don’t let it consume you. Then – this is most crucial – in an attempt to regain (perceived) loss of credibility, do not let that guilt make you promise to deliver more work soon. Never ever do that. Don’t even let manipulative glances from people make you do that. Focus on the task at hand. It doesn’t matter, at least provisionally, what people think of you.

Be very good to yourself: Treat yourself very kindly. You deserve a lot of love and affection, and it has to start with you. I know it is very clichéd to say these things, but after sniggering at such remarks, I have come to really believe in them myself. Reward yourself. If you have managed to exercise all seven days of a week, reward yourself to something nice. Get creative.

I will see you soon with another post!

Orinam editors’ note: For readers who would like to learn more about coping with depression, a guide on mental health for LGBT people developed by Ireland’s Health Service Executive mental health project is available here. Resources for those of us in the Indian context are being developed by Orinam and will soon be available here.

from Adrienne Rich’s Storm Warnings

Many years ago, I went to a psychiatrist to help myself get out of a terrible bout of depression. It had lasted several days, and by then I was really scared I’d do something to myself. The only thing that gave me some relief was to sit in the beach and read P.G.Wodehouse. But it really alarmed me that I could not laugh at all. Once, reading about some antics of Bertram Wooster’s, I found myself just smiling. I did not break out into my signature laughter, a cross between a horse’s neigh and the sound of an automobile engine trying to resurrect itself. No, all I could do was smile. I decided to force myself to laugh. My theatre director had taught me how to laugh on demand. I summoned all my reserve energies and I faked a laugh. I succeeded, but very soon I was sobbing.

Anyway. I wanted my dad to be with me when I spoke to the shrink. After about forty five minutes of his chatting me up, the doctor asked if my dad could wait outside. Then he asked me, “Do you have anything to share about your sexuality?” I said I was gay. For a moment, he sat back in his chair with an air of triumph. Ooooh, he has put his finger on the very source of my mental health issues, my sexual deviance! Then he leaned forward and said to me, “Does your dad know?” “Not yet,” I replied. He shot me a warning glance and said, “It will devastate him.”

Well, in the months that followed, nothing devastated me more than that comment and his piercing glance that pinned me to the pages of some medical book somewhere that said I was sick. But, for then, he sent me home with some anti-depressants. I never took them. When my dad gave them to me every night, I hid them in my bag and threw them out on my way to college.

I know some of you have suffered a lot more in the hands of shrinks. I am not interested in calibrating and ranking degrees of suffering. I just want to share what it has been to live and cope with some form of mental illness.

I think I have paid a heavy emotional and social price since childhood because of my sharp mood swings and the associated unpredictability. Like it is not bad enough to be tossed about like a tennis ball between emotional states, you also have to clean up the mess when you get out of the game. You will have to make up for the classes you missed, exams you failed to appear for, assignments you never got to finish, etc.

I really enjoyed going to school despite the taunts and jibes about my glorious sissiness, because my teachers were wonderful. My way of coping with the cruelty of fellow children was to ingratiate myself to the teachers, become their pet and position myself as someone the boys could not pick on with impunity. Some of you are familiar with this strategy, aren’t you? Don’t you think it is all exhausting work? But I made things hard even for these loving teachers when I simply did not go to school on many days. Whenever I woke up feeling like I was alone and hunted in the world, I refused to go to school. Or I invented some ailment to convince my parents not to send me to school. And it usually happened that I missed school for three or four days in a row. This was a pattern. Even the teachers who adored me found it hard to justify to others my absences. It came be seen that I was either taking undue advantage of the goodwill I had earned from the school, or I was a total hypochondriac.

Believe me or not, this continued into my university days. To add to my depression woes, I also had chronic migraines which tormented me like evil ghosts sucking the life out of me. And every time I returned to school/ college/ university, everyone thought I was just a weak-willed hypochondriac and not to be taken seriously. I don’t think I want to blame them. We had no framework then to think about mental health; we still don’t. If you felt low, you just picked yourself up, motivated yourself somehow and marched on like an intrepid warrior. The scores of self-help books on my shelf, which were all bought during that time of my life, bear testimony to this view.

I will tell you where I have lost most. People. My terrible mood swings and my sudden withdrawals perplexed the best of my friends. They did not know how to be with me. They did not know what the boundaries were. And I was not helping. I couldn’t. But it was not fair to them. Those who had a sense that I was suffering hung around patiently. Others simply thought I was blowing hot and cold. The way I saw it, well, why should they complicate their lives by having to deal with my ups and downs? ‘Drama queen’ was a label. ‘Intense’ was the adjective used often. All of it scared boyfriends away – prospective ones as well as actual ones.

One of the important decisions I had to make was to separate my sexuality from my mental health issues. I chose not to attribute any causal link between them. But to this day I am scared that people will make some such simplistic connection and pathologize my queerness. Why else do you think I am writing this under a pseudonym? I imagine terrible situations. I have been carefully peeping out of this closet for a while now, but I am not ready to fling it open yet. Also, for me, the whole closet analogy is getting very jaded. But that’s for another day.

I had to get creative with my life. I knew I could not do a nine-to-five job, because my sleep and diet patterns have always been askew. Unless I am on medication, I cannot sleep most nights. I read all night, and I am total bitch to everyone the next day.

I had to fashion myself into a freelancer.  I saw that the art I practiced was a good antidote to my bipolarity, so I started finding the right opportunities to do just that. One thing I still have not mastered is how to let at least very close friends know when I am withdrawing. Often, I don’t see them coming. I am walking, turning around a corner, and there they are. I am doing fine, and then suddenly something cuts me down.

Also, very few people take your problem seriously unless it is of some extreme kind. People say things like, “Oh, depression is very common. I read this statistic somewhere….” True. But, as the African American writer and teacher bell hooks has put it in the context of dysfunctional families, just because we are all dysfunctional in some way or another, it does not mean dysfunctionality has to be a norm. But then it seems to be a larger cultural problem: we don’t acknowledge violence as violence unless it is absolutely gory and terrible; we don’t count emotional violence as violence at all; and you don’t have a mental illness unless it is the kind that calls for institutionalization or some other kind of drastic intervention. Ironically, those who accuse you of creating drama often don’t take you seriously unless there is some drama!

As I write this, I am grappling with the question of which tense to use! Now that I have been helping myself with therapy, medication, meditation and reading, should I speak of my problems in the past tense?  On the other hand, I wonder if it is really such a wonderful thing to be such a function of medication. But you know what? I am going to be at it as long as I need. I work with trusted people.

One day at a time. That’s what I tell myself.

See you soon

Orinam Editor’s note: Vinodhan writes more about how he copes with depression in Spells and Charms.