The minister lamented the "western impact" on Indian society, saying that many are unwilling to let their parents be with them.
Dr K Sudhakar, Karnataka's Health Minister, said on Sunday that modern Indian women want to remain unmarried, are hesitant to give birth even after marriage, and prefer to have children through surrogacy. "Today, I'm sorry to report, many modern women in India choose to remain unmarried. Even if they marry, they do not want to have children. They are interested in surrogacy. As a result, there has been a paradigm change in our thinking, which is not good," he remarked at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurological Sciences on World Mental Health Day (NIMHANS). The minister lamented the "western impact" on Indian society, saying that many are unwilling to let their parents be with them.
"Unfortunately, we are heading in a western direction today. We don't want our parents to live with us, and we don't want grandparents to live with us either," added the minister. Speaking on mental health in India, Sudhakar stated that one out of every seven Indians has a mental illness, mild, moderate, or severe. However, he believes that stress management is an art that Indians should learn and teach the rest of the world. "Stress management is a skill. As Indians, we do not need to master this art. We need to teach the world how to deal with stress because yoga, meditation, and Pranayama are beautiful skills that our forefathers taught the world thousands of years ago," he added.
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Concerning COVID-19 and mental health, Sudhakar stated that families were unable to touch the bodies of their loved ones, causing them emotional anguish. "Because of the epidemic, the government began counselling COVID-19 sufferers. We have counselled over 24 lakh COVID-19 patients in Karnataka so far. I'm not aware of any other state that has done this," Sudhakar stated in his case. He thanked the NIMHANS and stated that the institute guided individuals through its digital platform and provided telemedicine.
Sudhakar also thanked Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, who spoke earlier at the occasion, for providing 1.5 crore COVID-19 vaccinations to Karnataka every month since September, increasing the state's immunisation coverage. He praised the union government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for providing 94 crore vaccinations since the start of the immunisation programme. The country took on the Herculean goal of vaccinating the whole population for free.
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