Counsellor Anita Gracias offers good advice for those cornered by circumstances. Ashwin Sriram meets her for a chat
Counsellor Anita Gracias offers good advice for those cornered by circumstances. Ashwin Sriram meets her for a chat
"She is like your sister, like your mother, she slaps... she's on your face and sets you straight," says Michael of Gracias's counselling. "She throws you an answer straight away, for a man that helps." Gracias's methods vary over individuals, cases and experience. "She is not a counsellor, she works based on experience," says Michael.
Anita Gracias is one of the 20 volunteers working at SAHAI, Bangalore's suicide prevention helpline. SAHAI functions as the sole hope for many in a city that records the highest suicide rate in the country.
Alarming statistics
According to the Bangalore city police records, in the past three years more than 2,000 people committed suicide each year, 60% of whom were menTheir motto reads: "Life. You're worth it" which holds true as it strives to help the depressed, the distressed, the oppressed or simply the discontented loner. Run by volunteers working for a cause, their senior-most counselor, a 52-year-old woman fondly referred by many as "Anu", Anita Gracias doesn't mind being your friend-in-need.
Sahai history
Most people would shy or shrug away from this suicidal lot but Gracias, like other volunteers, wants to help people, save lives, shoulder their pain and prevent the sad act of self-destruction. She can relate to all her suicidal callers because she herself experienced a depression deep enough to consider suicide seven years ago. That's when she went to work at SAHAI.
"I actually joined to save my own life," she admits. The gloom she had felt in her personal life came largely due to an incident where her neighbour had filed an unexpected complaint against her in court. It left her deeply, mentally and physically distraught. "I was in a deep-hole," she said.
During this time of depression, her knee had also started swelling unexpectedly but a long night walk with a friend made her realise that the swelling along with the pain had magically disappeared. "If God gave me the swelling, then it is He who takes it away."
Spiritual healing
No conversation with her goes by without her mentioning God. But despite being raised as a Protestant, she maintains that she is not religious, she is simply spiritual. "God is in every person, God isn't in a church u00e2u0080u00a6 he is out in the streets, in people."
u00a0Many of her callers fall in love with her methods, as they get more than they bargained for, they get to know her better, as she befriends a lot many. Besides making acquaintances, she loves to talk, but her profession demands that she listens more. Her counselled subjects say she fulfils that need.
"You need someone to listen to your nonsense and she made a huge effort in listening, more than anything else," says Eddy (name changed on request). Eddy suffered depression last year over a lack of job and other personal issues and she counselled him out of depression. He had cut himself off from other people and was in need of help.
"Medical counsellors irritate me, I'm hard-headed," he says. Gracias took a different approach to Eddy, she didn't attend to him as a medical counsellor, she came to him as a friend, he says. Gracias spoke to Eddy almost every day for six months, they met and they spoke via chat and in most instances they kept in touch with each other through phone. Eddy is free of his days of depression; he is now doing well as a freelance features writer. Anita had helped another.
Gracias's greatest asset is that she relates to people and their needs and helps even the most silent of callers to voice out their thoughts. According to Gracias, men are less vocal in expressing their feelings and troubles, and are hence more suicidal than women.
Gracias blames society for conditioning men, into having them believe that they needed to be the more mentally strong of the two sexes. "Men are more suicidal because they are brought up (to think) not to cry," says Gracias, they are conditioned to hold their tears, so they explode upon emotional downturn and are more prone to committing drastic acts of taking their own lives.
Eddy wasn't the only male Gracias had helped get out of depression. Thirty-three-year-old Michael (name changed on request) had trouble with his marriage, which has now ended. After offering counselling sessions, Gracias realised that their marriage wasn't going to last and set them straight.
Gracias was trained as a counsellor for a brief period of three weeks by the National Institute for Mental Health and Neurological Sciences (Nimhans), Bangalore under a joint venture initiated by three organisations that includes the Rotary Club East and Medico Pastoral Association.
Despite admitting that the training isn't enough to make one a trained counsellor, she said that nothing could really prepare one for this job. No one would know the caller, their mental state of being or their predicament when they take that call.
"I don't prescribe medication, I don't analyse the way a psychologist is trained to do, I'm not a medical professional," she says. "I learn on the jobu00e2u0080u00a6 it is a continuous learning curve."
Many of her callers see her beyond her profession. Michael, besides Eddy, sees Gracias to be more a friend than a counsellor. "You can call her at 3 in the morning," and she would still be willing to help, Michael says. Michael along with his wife had consulted a professional counsellor prior to the Gracias experience.
"With Anita, it worked well," when they both went to her, they felt "let down," by their previous counselling sessions with a professional. "What others gave was advice, what Anita gave was help."
Counsellors aren't tailor-made to tackle all problems, most professionals try a routine customised method based on principles of logic and science, but Gracias doesn't work that way says Michael.
"She has an element of 'Indianised' counselling," where she mixes her experiences, provides warmth, appeals to your emotions, relates with your difficulties and converses like a relative, rather than go entirely rational or methodological, which are also professional traits that she blends with her counselling. "You need a mix of both," and "Anita's got it."
Suicide Helplines
Samadhan
H.G Circle, Tank Bund Road
Gandhi Nagar, Bangaluru, Karnataka 560009
09845612209
Sahai
Pottery Road
Frazer Town
Bangalore u2013560005
Ph 25477375, 254929
Viveka - Centre for Emotional Supportu00a0
831, 2nd cross, 7th Main, Hal 2nd Stage,Indiaranagar
65330387
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