Mental Health and the Pandemic

Hi, everyone. Anitkarsh, the CEO of Network Capital here just to check in with you if you're doing alright and taking good care of your loved ones. This is obviously a trying time for India and for the rest of the world. And I'm here just to tell you that this community is there for you today and in all, it always will be. When we look at the media challenges that this pandemic will unleash, we can see 500 million people have lost their jobs. People are going through undeniable physical, mental, financial stress. And what we do now will define how we remember this community and what the future of the country and the future of the world will be. We should be wary of deterministic conclusions about the future of, you know, the pandemic. Things are out of hand today, but we can still bring it into our control. But the first step is to recognize and not try to use disinformation or misinformation to fight the horrors going on. Acceptance is an important part of overcoming the challenge. I was reflecting on an article I wrote for the Mint about a year back about the mental health challenges that the pandemic is unleashing. I didn't think that the pandemic would go on for so long, but now it seems that it is. And we haven't even perhaps seen the worst. So we have to brace ourselves and be prepared for the future. One topic that I think is becoming increasingly important for all of us, especially students in schools, my future children, your children, all of them, is how do you create emotional literacy and mental well being as part of the core curriculum of a school? And this is something which no school, even the best ones around the world, equip students to really understand first principles, thinking, being in touch with how they're feeling. There's a lot of confusion about what does emotional literacy mean. So as part of that, in the Network Capital Summer School, we've decided to include a module specifically focused on emotional literacy. We've started calling it Pain plus Reflection Equal to Progress. And our goal is for our children, for the students who will partake of the Network Capital Summer School, to really contextualize and write down the pain that they're seeing in their parents, in their friends, in their loved ones. And what does reflection as a child really look like? When you combine pain and reflection is how you grow as a person. That's how you grow as a society. That's how you grow as a community. And we thought extensively about what's the best way to include this kind of literacy. Among students. And it occurred to us that maybe case study is what's going to be the the way forward. While writing the piece explaining coronavirus to children, it just struck me that you can employ techniques of storytelling, first principles, thinking, mental models, lattice work, frameworks, all of these things, but contextualize it to our children. We are partners of NITI AAYOG for a very long time, and it's been almost a year. Kids haven't been to school. It's all happening online. I'm pretty sure that this is taking a huge toll not only on the children, but also the parents and teachers and the entire ecosystem. So I'm here to tell you that we understand the pain, we understand the challenge, and we are here to take one micro action so that together we can overcome this challenge bit by bit, play by play. The people who are going to teach you the pain plus reflection equal to progress framework will be practitioners from different walks of life, people who've experienced trauma, people who've helped groups, communities, students, bodies, et cetera, or overcome collective trauma. And the idea is to make it part of the daily vocabulary, the operating system of children. Rather than waiting for one final day when things will be great, things will never be perfect. We just have to do whatever we can today so that our children for the future are assured of a world which values mental health just as much, if not more, than physical health. Again, Network Capital is there for you if you wish to contribute. If you wish to get involved, please feel free to join the Network Capital discussion, Discord server, or many of the subgroups running there. And this is again a time for micro actions. Let's do whatever we can today to make India and the world slightly kinder, slightly healthier, slightly better. Come forward, contribute your resources, and don't take your mental health for granted. See you very soon. Take care.