NewsX was recently joined by UK-based psychotherapist Diya Ganguly Mallick, co-founder of Psychonnect, for an exclusive conversation as a part of its special series, NewsX A-List. She spoke about her organisation which facilitates mental well-being, diagnostics, counselling and therapy service.
Talking about her reason for starting the organisation despite being an academic, Ganguly said, “Being born and raised in India, I have been exposed to traditional approaches like yoga, mindfulness meditation for mental health challenges, then my education and subsequent experiences abroad, on the other hand, exposed me to more scientific and empirical approaches for tackling the mental health challenges. I realised that I had the unique opportunity to actually merge these new approaches together or rather create an ecosystem that will be a confluence of the traditional Eastern approaches and scientific Western approaches.”
Speaking about how we can break the stigma and how her organisation is working to combat the stigma at the grassroots level, Ganguly said, “This is a very serious issue, not only in India but worldwide. In Psychonnect, we have two approaches to it—the first is driven to our very own initiative which is the ARK charter, where we try to endeavour through the superficial layers of human interaction and engage in deeper conversation, which talks about the various facets of mental health awareness, recognition, and knowledge on the subject. The second approach is to reinvent the context in which mental health is projected; we all know mental health is predicted in a negative or depressing way in media, news, etc, so it’s important that people think good mental health is actually a lifestyle statement just like being vegan or like yoga.”
Talking about how we ensure that safety doesn’t stop at physical health but also includes mental health, Ganguly said, “As I mentioned earlier, mental health is connected to physical health, people cannot look after their physical health without giving attention to your mental health and it is also important to emphasise here that whenever you talk about this pandemic, it has not only impacted our physical body but also on our mind.”
Talking about her journey in India, then in the UK, and how she actually decided that this is something that she would like to do, Ganguly said, “I narrate a story from my school days to answer this. I used to be a volunteer for an old-age home as a child and then one thing I realised that there were a lot of checks for physical parameters but there was nothing done for improving the subjective well-being of those people in that old-age home. That’s the time I realised I want to do something for improving people’s subjective well-being or improving their emotional state.”