IRS officer Shubhrata Prakash opens up about struggles with mental health and why advocacy is important

In 2006, after the birth of her first baby, Shubhrata Prakash remembers feeling hysterical and suicidal. Living in Chennai during that time, the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer was aware of post-partum depression, but she says she felt no apathy towards the baby, but just a continuous feeling of malaise that led to incessant bouts of crying.

During such moments, she reveals she would just feel like jumping off the balcony to end the agony she was living in. This was the beginning of Prakash’s long and arduous struggle with mental health, and understanding the importance of seeking help. This also led her to become a strong advocate of raising awareness on mental health and writing her book, The D Word – A Survivor’s Guide to Depression, which chronicles her personal experiences and lists resources for those in need.

“I never thought that someone like me could have a mental disorder. I was always on the edge, and would cry at the drop of a hat. I was always a little sensitive and emotional, but this was different. My whole body had slowed down, and I was becoming dysfunctional; something had changed inside me,” she tells HerStory.

This continued for the next five years, and into her second pregnancy, which also turned out to be a terrible period for Prakash, health-wise. She was diagnosed with gestational diabetes and hypertension.

“I used to cry a lot and everyone, my husband and parents, kept on asking me why I was crying. I felt very lonely through the pregnancy. Two months after my second child was born, I started getting anxiety attacks and while living in a progressive city like Chennai, nobody thought I needed to see a psychiatrist or suggested something was wrong with my mental health,” Prakash says.

On the edge

In between all these, she would try to analyse what was going on. An extremely gregarious and outgoing girl throughout her childhood, she had “a finger in every pie”—whether it was singing, dancing, painting, writing, or theatre.

In 2002, she was diagnosed with a congenital heart condition, but she managed to report to her UPSC interview when her puncture wounds hadn’t even healed properly. “That would have been the time to have been depressed, when I was going through so much,” she points out.

In March 2009, she recalls having the same feeling—that life was not worth living, and decided to consult a neurophysician. She was diagnosed with acute anxiety and stress, and advised to get admitted in the hospital. But this was not possible because her second baby was just nine months old. The doctor also prescribed medication, but the drugs didn’t really help her much.

“My anger remained high but the drugs were not helping me much. I was sleeping all day and had two little kids to care for. I had to go back to work. I stopped the medicine cold turkey as it wasn’t helping me with anything,” she says.

She is quick to emphasise that going off medication cold turkey is never recommended and one needs to be tapered off psychiatric drugs. She went through two-and-a-half months of severe withdrawal symptoms—one of the worst periods she experienced during this ordeal—with suicidal thoughts and emotional pain.

But there was no respite. Life was a roller-coaster, and though Prakash threw herself into work, the daily stress at work took its toll and she had to go on leave. In 2011, she started seeing a psychiatrist who said she had endogenous or biological depression and prescribed antidepressants.

Turning points

There were two turning points in this struggle. Prakash’s husband told her, ‘all you have to do is survive and live’–and the second is what she learned during one of her cognitive behavioural therapy sessions.

“My psychotherapist just said that there may be situations I might feel bad about or good about, but one cannot change people, but learn to survive. After some time, I tapered off my medication and began experiencing small windows of normal mood,” she says.

Prakash went back to exercise—swimming, yoga, and meditation, and started practicing mindfulness.

But the next few years in office were stressful due to changing circumstances. There were good days, and bad days and brain fog.

This is where Prakash opens up about the challenges of mental health in the workplace.

“In 2012, I decided to tell my superiors I had depression, because there was no other way; I couldn’t even get out of bed and work. I had to apply for leave. At the time, I had a few bad experiences and the head of the organisation said I was making excuses for not working. But others supported me,” she says.

Chronicling her experiences

She began researching depression, its causes, and read a lot of first-person accounts of people struggling with it. The more she read, the more she was convinced, “I’m not a bad or ungrateful person” and this was empowering.

Prakash began writing a blog on mental health and this led to the book, The D Word – A Survivor’s Guide to Depression, where she speaks in detail about her struggles with mental health, information about mental health disorders, and caring for oneself.

She continues the advocacy through articles and posts on social idea, is building a small community on WhatsApp and runs a support group where a lot of colleagues have reached out for help for themselves, for family, or others.

“I am not a licensed medical or mental health professional and there’s a limit to the advocacy I do. But my advocacy is more on the supply side of the equation—we need better qualified mental health professionals and if we don’t speak up collectively, things will not change,” she says.

But her advocacy has not been one without some trolling or nasty comments.

“People have asked, ‘Why are people with mental disorders working with the Government of India? Why are we paying taxpayer money on their salaries and that I should be dismissed from service,” Prakash says.

She also believes community mental health programmes have to be strengthened at all levels as the problem is multi-layered and needs intervention at multiple levels. “We need specialists, super specialists, trained psychiatrists and doctors at the block and district levels, psychiatric nurses and community leaders to raise awareness,” she says.

Despite her challenges with mental health, Prakash has had an illustrious career in the IRS so far. She has worked in vigilance, criminal investigation, and intelligence, and was on deputation at Niti Aayog for three years. She is now Commissioner of Income Tax, Government of India in New Delhi.