Are we taking depression for granted now? Often, many of us casually sigh and say, "Nothing seems right. I'm depressed." But most of us are not yet out of the situation completely when we ignore it move on. However, things are changing, with a lot of influencers opening up about mental health and accepting that depression and anxiety are real issues that need to be dealt with.
Live Jam is one such initiative, which has been actively working for the past 13 years to fight mental health issues among the teenagers. The brainchild of motivational speaker and musician Bonny Andrews, the initiative is to reach out to youngsters using positive music and motivational storytelling. After an overwhelming response from his first initiative, Bonny has now come up with a campaign called Kill It that aims at eliminating depression — plenty of India's top musicians have been posting their images with the Kill It campaign frame on social media.
Bonny, who believes that the best solution is to 'nip it in the bud', tells us that music has always been an effective solution in reaching out to a large number of school and college students. Recently, popular Indian band Sanam has also joined hands with Bonny and his team of volunteers."We usually have real-life storytellers who talk about their own stories of surviving. So far, we have reached out to more than 1.2 million teenagers across the world," says Bonny. "It is easier to reach people in their formative years. Solutions are more effective at this stage," he adds.
Bonny, whose team conducts around 300 live jam sessions a year says that all the services are non-profit. Nevertheless, well-wishers can still donate to the cause. "Depression and resultant suicides are killing a lot of young people. We couldn't find a better phrase here. Here it stands for depression. It is a wake-up call for people to come on board," he says.
The team right now plans to use art forms on a large scale, along with social media platforms to convey positive messages of hope to the young people. They're also planning to start a 24x7 helpline and hope centres across the country, where anyone who is feeling depressed can get a therapist's help for free. They're also fundraising for the same on Ketto. They plan to empower the victims' friends and family as well to be agents of hope and help out.
Bonny shared some stories of people they have helped. John*, an angry depressed boy, was often getting into fights and was suffering from depression. After he underwent a transformation with Live Jam's programmes, he joined them as a volunteer. "Once, we were in Arunachal for a programme we met another young boy who was adamant on creating trouble during our programme. John took him to a corner and spoke to him for long hours and in the end, that boy broke down. That was a trigger for him to address his issues and now he is an entrepreneur," Bonny narrates.
He also talks about a young boy from a broken family with a history of a bad childhood. He was steered the wrong way at a very young age. Until one day, a friend challenged him to turn back and ponder on his own life for a moment. It changed his life. Not only did he transform, but he set out to help others as well.
If you are still in doubt about his identity, its Bonny himself.
For more details, check out killit.in/