Why do you think that today’s youth needs therapy more than they needed in the 90’s? To be precise why is the need of therapy is getting higher among the youth?
I have dedicated five years of my life to studying literature, and I vividly remember what my professor said on the last day of my class "Literature is the only medium through which you can live more than once and the study of literature makes you tolerant towards others". When we read a literary teRead more
I have dedicated five years of my life to studying literature, and I vividly remember what my professor said on the last day of my class “Literature is the only medium through which you can live more than once and the study of literature makes you tolerant towards others”.
When we read a literary text, we’re not simply reading it, but living the life of someone else through the words written on the pages. You experience emotions such as grief, sadness, anger and happiness for characters that aren’t even real, you feel for them and that makes you tolerant towards people in real life.
All those famous writers we read, wrote during different times, under different political and cultural circumstances, many even faced exile and persecution for the simple act of writing what’s on their mind. Literature has a lot of power, it can shape the society and make it a better place but that would only be possible if people start giving literature the importance it deserves.
You read novels like Beloved, Things Fall Apart, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Hungry Tide etc., and realize that life is not all about you. These novels gave me the chance to recognize my privilege and feel for the slaves that were treated like animals in the US, or how European Colonizers ruined perfectly well civilizations for their own gain. Reading these novels made me thankful that I didn’t have to endure such difficulties but it also helped me to see things from a different perspective.
When I’m sad, I pick up a copy of my favourite novel and it makes me realize that I’m not alone, the characters too are suffering and it indirectly means that the writer too, suffered, and that’s why he/she was able to write something so devastatingly beautiful. Literature makes me feel less lonely in an otherwise lonely world of mine.
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To understand the answer to this question we need to understand societal changes that have occurred over years. It is not just the sudden need for psychology which has increased over time, it is also the awareness that has increased multifold. Thanks to social media the awareness for mental well-beiRead more
To understand the answer to this question we need to understand societal changes that have occurred over years. It is not just the sudden need for psychology which has increased over time, it is also the awareness that has increased multifold. Thanks to social media the awareness for mental well-being has increased, leading people to seek help from mental health specialists. However, the trends do suggest a significant rise in rates of people seeking mental health help, leading to worldwide tension. Attributing a single cause to it might be redundant but many factors including social media, environmental changes, and societal changes do contribute to the deterioration of mental health in today’s world.
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