Social Conditioning in India: the past and present, what of the future?

Abstract

The paper aims to discuss the impact of social conditioning on the mental health of young adults and children in India. Social Conditioning has at its core the role of stereotypes in conditioning humans to behave in such and such a way. Positive and negative reinforcements of society's condition, encourage and train people to think and act in a certain way. It starts at birth, and several factors such as family, physical and social environment, biology, social experiences and so on create certain social conditioning. This issue is of importance in the present day as the factors that promote social conditioning have varied in the last 75years of Indian Independence with unprecedented technological changes that individuals have been encountering, the media and social networks occupying significant major roles in the lives of people. Statistics show that Mental health issues and the number of suicides per year are increasing steadily in India. Several research studies point out that a major causal factor leading to suicide is the failure to meet expectations. The role of social conditioning on the maladaptive behaviour of individuals taking a heavy toll on their lives appears to be critically important. In this context, the paper discusses the scenario of social conditioning in India based on the secondary sources collected from research sites such as research gate, Google scholar, Academia.edu etc. The study proposes, the need of the hour is psychological intervention at early ages to have a society with mentally healthy individuals.