Pratyusha Banerjee suicide-shaming: A mental health lesson for Hema Malini, Prakash Jaju

Banerjee's suicide has thrown up a worrying pattern of looking down upon someone who is going through a period of self-doubt and depression

The alleged suicide of popular 24-year-old TV actress Pratyusha Banerjee on April 1 has once again highlighted the fickle and fragile nature of being a female celebrity in India’s entertainment world. 
 

Banerjee is only the latest name in a list of actresses who have taken the extreme step – Shikha Joshi (40) in May 2015, 25-year-old Jiah Khan’s death in June 2013, VIveka Babaji in June 2010, Kuljeet Randhawa (28) in February 2006, and Nafisa Joseph in July 2004. 

Banerjee was said to have been facing turmoil in her relationship with boyfriend and live-in partner Rahul Raj, who has now been arrested and charged with abetment of suicide.

But what her death has thrown up is a more worrying pattern of looking down upon someone who is going through a period of self-doubt, depression or other mental health issues as being somehow weak and not cut out for the industry. 

Yesteryear star Hema Malini on Twitter called suicides “senseless”, saying, “The world admires a fighter, not a loser.”

Reaction was swift – some pointed out that suicide was not an act of cowardice, while others raised the issue of mental health and undiagnosed depression.

News of Banerjee’s death and the discourse surrounding depression also seems to have prompted Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra’s ex-manager to come out in the open with revelations of her alleged suicide tendencies.

Prakash Jaju, in a series of tweets, went on to explain how Chopra, as a young struggling actress attempted suicide 2-3 times, triggered by a number of reasons.

 “PC was very close to Aseem merchant’s mother, her death in 2002 shattered her so much that she tried to jump off karan apt to commit suicide [sic!],” Jaju tweeted.

Image source: The News Minute

 “I reached at nick of time and caught hold of her and tied her to a chair till grills were fixed in all the windows of the flat.”

He further added that he wanted to make a point “that suicidal tendency is in most of the girls of film industry.”

“PC may look very strong now but she was also very vulnerable in struggling days, tried to commit suicide 2-3 times but I managed to stop her” and added that “Girls don’t act intelligently at the age of 18-19.”

Image source: The News Minute

But such deaths and attempted suicides are only indicators of deteriorating mental health – a phenomenon that many disregard, let alone accept. 

What adds to the danger is such public comments, shaming those with depression or other issues that need counselling, at the very least. Instead, such individuals are targeted and shamed for their ‘weakness’ or are seen as unstable, creating an atmosphere where their careers become dependent on being seen as strong and able to take any upheavals in their professional or personal lives in their stride. 

Seen from that perspective, Hema Malini’s comment belittle the conditions that can lead to suicide. Similarly, Jaju’s self-glorification in preventing Priyanka Chopra’s alleged suicides focuses more on her being a weak girl, struggling to deal with her personal life. The possible depression and loneliness does not seem to be important enough to be diagnosed as a medical condition in need of professional medical help.

Today, when gender equity are at the centre of almost all discussions, the pressure to prove oneself is felt more acutely than ever before. Moreover, women are expected to live up to what has been a patriarchal model of manhood and strength wherein they are not expected to display or indulge in emotion or sentiment, which are seen as feminine and therefore, ‘weak’. 

Juggling a demanding career and an unstable personal life in the constant glare of the public gaze is not easy, especially in an industry where competition is fierce and real friends are few. In the midst of all this, comments like that of Hema Malini and Prakash Jaju attach the stigma of weakness and failure to mental health issues.

Last year, one of Bollywood’s top female stars came out with a public confession of her battle with depression. Deepika Padukone’s coming out, so to speak, found many backers, but what seems to have been missed is that through the years when she was battling to make her mark, she struggled alone (with the support of her parents, of course) for fear of the stigma attached and being sidelined in the industry. As she herself told the Hindustan Times: “There is shame and stigma attached to talking about depression.”

Padukone was the not the first. Meena Kumari, one of the top actresses in the ‘50s and ‘60s, who  was rumoured to have a turbulent personal life, later became a depressive alcoholic and recluse. Parveen Babi, who quit Bollywood at the apogee of her career in the early Eighties and left India, was suspected to have left because of pressures both at work and in her personal life. When she returned six years later, she was rumoured to be schizophrenic, but whether she got any support from the film fraternity remains unknown, given everyone dismissed her later rantings as that of a ‘crazy woman’. 

According to the World Health Organisation, depression will be the most widespread epidemic in the next few years to come. In the face of that fact, the mental health problem is clearly one of the most ignored and least diagnosed issues - especially in India, even more so for women, across geographies, incomes and professions. 

Depression is real. Suicides stemming from depression are real. Regardless of whether it is celebrities or the common folk, ‘sadness’ and ‘loneliness’ experienced for exceptionally long periods is not something that one can just push aside. 
 

So, while Hema Malini and Prakash Jaju need to make note of the seriousness of mental health issues, along with a crash course in sensitivity, a word of advice to Rakhi Sawant is also called for: banning ceiling fans in households will not help reduce the suicide rate in this country.