He has worked with me for about 8 years. Hardly a boy when he joined he has moved up from being the office boy into a skilled technician. A couple of years ago he came to us distraught. His sister, a mother of two little girls had just been diagnosed with kidney failure. I called my friend Dr Trivedi and she was admitted at once. Both her kidneys had failed. The family had known of one kidney having failed some time ago but did not have the money for dialysis. And after all she was only a woman, not the bread  winner of the family who was indispensable. Two days later she died. Four days later her husband disappeared, the bread winner vamoosed leaving no bread behind, just a broken father with three more mouths to feed. He is a good man, the father, and didn't dream of telling his daughter or grandchildren that, having married her off and sent her to her “real” home, he would have nothing more to do with her, that she was parku dhan.

A year ago, without apparent cause he started becoming irregular at work. Then he would appear with a bruise or a gash. We inquired, concerned, and were always fobbed off with an excuse that he had fallen off his motorcycle or bumped into something. We found that he had taken to drinking heavily. We spoke to him, tried to caution, counsel, help. After a few months he seemed to get a hold of himself and was back to normal.

His wedding was arranged, allegedly with his approval. We tried to dissuade him, asked him to wait a bit, to save before taking this step. He said it was fine, he knew his responsibilities. For the first few months his wife did not join him. The drinking started again. Time went by with his going in and out of drinking bouts. The a period of exemplary behaviour would follow and we would breathe a sigh of relief.

A few months ago the drinking started again. It slipped out that he had become a father, a year ago! Why had he not mentioned it, celebrated it? Oh he just sort of forgot to tell us. He didn't turn up for work for a few days. We called and were told that he had gone and tied himself up at a dargha to get rid of the drinking habit. Shouldn't wee take him to a de-addiction center, to a psychologist who might tell him what he was shying away from, what was bothering him and leading to this behaviour? No, no his family told us, this would cure him.

Last fortnight the absenteeism started again. He came with a bloodshot eye to work, not steady, not looking me in the eye. That night, at one, his wife called another colleague and screamed for help. He was beating her up, throwing the child around. The next day we were told that he had been beating up his parents, his sister, breaking things, throwing things around on the street, yelling that he would kill himself and blame it on them. What was to be done? Should we go to the police? To a hospital? Try to take matters in our own hands? Separate his wife and child from him for their safety? And how could we protect this dearly loved colleague from himself?

This is a story that, with variations, plays itself out in millions of households, around us, every day. A mother who has thrown out her daughter suddenly reappears at her daughter's workplace and screams vile abuse and lies outside the office/workplace. A divorced husband suddenly appears drunk and abusive one night and lays claim to his ex wife, by abduction the children. A young daughter, brought up on daily violence and abuse in the household, suddenly starts going into trances and becomes a witch, terrifying everyone, breaking the little that the household possesses, beating the parents that she sees as the cause.

Our society has a level of mental ill health that defies description. And by and large, hiding it within the family as we do, we do not realize the magnitude in society at large. And this is not confined to the poorer sections of society. There are hardly any organizations or amenities that deal with this. The police are likely to say that they won't register a case of abuse as it is within the family. Psychiatrists are few and far between. And for the poor it is easier to fall into the mumbo jumbo of priests or temples where they are chained and whipped to rid them of the spirit, or to tie threads and amulets.

But the malaise is much deeper, more prevalent and wide spread. And it threatens all of us. While much is perhaps being done about the physical health of our people, the havoc being wrought by stress related disorders remains totally swathed in secrecy. Till it is too late.