Tech-addicted

There is actually a disease called NOMOPHOBIA (no more mobile phone phobia) which I think most of us suffer from. We just can’t resist our mobile phones. It’s just like any other addiction, rather worse to be honest.

Nowadays I see people just roaming around with their heads down to a screen, ears closed with headsets and just expressing their heart out in chats. The sad truth is, technology advancements are making us so much dependent that we are unable to use our brains. we humans are meant to be calm, intelligent, social beings but technology has made us worst than ever before. I think it’s not the tech we should blame, it’s us. We are letting the tech innovators do it on us. I agree it has to lead to ease in our lives but with many negative effects which we can shut it down if we want.

There is literally a disease called NOMOPHOBIA (no more mobile phone phobia) which I think most of us suffer from. We just can’t resist our mobile phones. It’s just like any other addiction, rather worse to be honest.

Remember those days when we could do all the simple calculations in our heads, remember all the phone numbers, maintain a diary, gave more importance to our surroundings. and see now, for very minor calculations we use a calculator, Unable to remember our emergency numbers.

We are all now addicted to this piece of technology, and when I see parents or anyone just taking one’s phone for just some moments we are able to see withdrawal symptoms like anger, Restlessness, irritability. Most importantly the never fulfilling desire, spending more and more on buying new mobile phones just to show everyone and not even use it’s 10% potential.

I am being honest! how many of us just buy phones just because its more attractive and people will appreciate or be jealous? It’s Trending now and smartphone companies share a great market now. Its good to have the latest technology devices but only if it is required.

This piece of device is misused, especially by teens and young adults. They just get addicted to mobile phones very easily. Always occupied in mobiles, active on social media, watching porn, chatting unnecessarily, unlocking without any reason, occupied in camera with numerous filters and what not. It is a great time killer and hence they don’t find any time for themselves, family and most importantly their work. It is the age where your mind thinks out of the box but they just keep it occupied with the lethal box of technology.

Mobile Phone addiction is worse. They are always occupied in phones not realizing what’s happening around them. It is really altering our brains. According to Price, when we read digital media, the cluttered landscape of links and ads and the short bursts of attention that are required by scrolling and swiping and tweeting result in a contradiction in terms: “a highly focused state of distraction.” Even though this distraction is short-lived, however, its frequency causes its effect to be expressed on our mind, body, and health in a longer term. It brings about a long-lasting change in our brains.

Am I Addicted to my Smartphone?

This self-assessment is not meant to officially diagnose you with cell phone addiction. If you are concerned about your problematic behaviors, speak to your doctor or mental health professional about possible treatment. (https://www.psychguides.com/guides/signs-and-symptoms-of-cell-phone-addiction/)

Do you find yourself spending more time on your smartphone than you realize?
Do you find yourself mindlessly passing time on a regular basis by staring at your smartphone even though there might be better or more productive things to do?
Do you seem to lose track of time when on your cell phone?
Do you find yourself spending more time texting, tweeting, or emailing as opposed to talking to real-time people?
Has the amount of time you spend on your cell phone been increasing?
Do you secretly wish you could be a little less wired or connected to your cell phone?
Do you sleep with your smartphone on or under your pillow or next to your bed regularly?
Do you find yourself viewing and answering texts, tweets, and emails at all hours of the day and night, even when it means interrupting other things you are doing?
Do you text, email, tweet, or surf the internet while driving or doing other similar activities that require your focused attention and concentration?
Do you feel your use of your cell phone actually decreases your productivity at times?
Do you feel reluctant to be without your smartphone, even for a short time?
When you leave the house, you ALWAYS have your smartphone with you and you feel ill-at-ease or uncomfortable when you accidentally leave your smartphone in the car or at home, or you have no service, or it is broken?
When you eat meals, is your cell phone always part of the table place setting?
When your phone rings, beeps, buzzes, do you feel an intense urge to check for texts, tweets, or emails, updates, etc.?
Do you find yourself mindlessly checking your phone many times a day even when you know there is likely nothing new or important to see?

By Sunansh Malik

Letters from Kashmir

A few days back, a life stuck in the shadow of many a severe life-threatening drug, was finally caught and brought under the condition of normalcy. A life totally caught in the mire of severe drug addiction was restored.

For me, one is addicted when one makes drugs a priority over life – the drugs that take the user far from normalcy and to the brink of ruining one’s identity! It is when one loses identity for the urge of drugs that one usually realizes the mistake. It is then that one realizes that all that the drugs gave in return was a life of dissolved potential and weird irrational personality; unconscious and unaware of worldly affairs.

Usually, people get into addiction due to some kind of stress that they undergo. It may be social religious etc. Most of the youth of the present generation are drug addicts because they may have passed through some types of criticism like due to their family standard, their weakness in education and other social issues.

A large number of our youth are also caught due to the perceived western influence on their minds. It completely changes our mindset and makes us feel that we are at the top of the world, but it actually ruins us down to the bottom. Some youth use cigarettes that makes them feel that it raises their social status, but they are unaware that it is actually wrong and makes their status to fall in society.

Some of our genius youth crush a bit of charas and fetch a feeling of being a saint and claim to have achieved an ascetic tendency. Others fall in love and when they feel cheated, some might start indulging into drugs. Many a great minded youth of our country also get indulged with this evil of drug addiction because their potential is being crushed under the feet of some rich families who snatch, through corrupt practices, the rightful opportunities belonging to youth mid or lower class families who have worked for it. The youth suffer unemployment and begin to use drugs that later leads to suicides too.

Now! In the present era of development and education, there is an alarming need to control the addiction and save the youth and the future of our country. There are many ways to control addiction among youth as it can be controlled starting from grass root level to the next higher levels up to the highest level. This way the drug addiction can be completely neutralized in our country.

First, individuals can play a great role in diverting the attention of youth towards some social and religious work that will inculcate a feeling of motivation in their minds and make them stress-free. Hence, it will prevent them from using drugs.

Parents also have a vital role to play to drive this addiction out of our society by being more supportive of them, rather than being critical. This way their children won’t suffer any kind of stress and would possibly focus more on their studies. Additionally, there should also be social action on selling and availability of these drugs, especially to the youth.

Educational and other institutes can help a lot to destroy this evil of addiction by introducing youth to various athletic activities that will completely change the mind of youth about addiction. These institutes can also organize various debates and programs in view of the drug abuse thus control it a lot. The government must play a major role in driving the evil out by introducing various schemes for youth, generating employment and setting various rehabilitation centers up for the already addicted youth, so that they can rehabilitate and start their journey again with a new positive change. There should be a complete and effective ban the life-threatening drugs in the country and all the drug peddlers and sellers should be arrested as they are also a great cause for the ruin of the youth.

Finally, the steps against this biggest social evil should be made our top priority because if not controlled now, our country may suffer a lot and would be ruled my mindless cowards in future. And that would be the most frightening debt under which the country may soon drown.

Saqib Javed Dar (Anantnag)

Muqu’s Creations

(Saqib Javed Dar is a Class XI student of Saint Peter’s International Academy, Anantnag, J&K. He studies science stream and aspires to be a future doctor and writer. He is also an avid writer and writes about his experiences of life.)

Pain at midnight…

I opened the door in a partial slumber. It was a familiar face of the lady next door. She had been my favorite one as a kid…..

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I often played with her daughter, and would sometimes have dinner at her home as my mother kept calling for me. I liked what she cooked, and moreover, it was fun! That was long time back! However, tonight her face at the door couldn’t stop me from feeling irritated.

“I couldn’t get your number, and your uncle was in immense pain….” She seemed embarrassed. It was well past midnight, and she had apparently been ringing the doorbell since past 10 minutes or so before my mother answered it.

I quietly picked up my spectacles and slipped off the front gate into the cool night breeze that made me a little less sedated. When I reached him, the very look at his face made the pain obvious. It was just a small tooth in his mouth, and his entire life hung at its mercy at that moment!

He had already taken two doses of ‘Flexon’. It was useless. There was no other painkiller that they had. It was 1am. All the medicine shops or clinics would be closed, and this guy really needed relief! The doctor inside me didn’t know what to do. We were never taught this at the college, but, sometimes our education impacts our thinking so much that we stop thinking like humans. If only we could! As I thought about all the medical procedures that could stop the pain, the lady softly murmured, “I wish I could drive….”

It just struck me, that being a doctor isn’t all you need to cure suffering. Sometimes being human could benefit more. I just rushed back, grabbed my keys and drove to the 24 hours pharmacy at the nearest hospital. On my way back, I had two thoughts in my mind. The first one was that how easy was this! The second one was that what if this were a village and we had nothing around to get the medicine from?

As I handed over the medicine and stayed with him till he was fine again, my mind was preoccupied with the thought of a person in pain at midnight in a village. Though I was able to relieve that pain for him that day, my heart goes out for all those fellow countrymen who have to spend nights in pain because they have nowhere to go. As we relieve individual pain, we sometimes forget that real healthcare will be achieved only when we have pain relief for everyone a stone throw away, even at midnight!

The Second Opinion

‘Trust is like a mirror. Once broken it never joins.’

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There we go with a most virulent query in the minds of thousands. Seeking of a second opinion from a doctor.

Seeking a second opinion is a common practice that, in a patient’s perspective, can improve accuracy for a treatment and reduce unnecessary procedures and risks. Almost 88% of the patients are seen going for a second opinion before treatment. This has many advantages and disadvantages. Now let us go into the roots of this thought.

Reasons for seeking a second opinion

It is reasonable to seek multiple opinions for your health. Inevitable discrepancies in the clinical judgment make the second opinions clinically significant and cost-effective due to their potential to reduce the costs of unnecessary expensive and invasive diagnostic & surgical procedures. The second opinion (SO) program was first introduced in the US in 1970’s by the insurance companies. Many countries including India support the SO program. Some like the UK, however, discourage it.

Types of seekers

There are mainly three types of patients who seek a second opinion.

Type 1 are the ones who go for it on their own due to trust issues or being doubtful about the doctor or the procedures that are undertaken.

Type 2 are those which are referred by the physician. It may be due to primary care physician’s doubts about diagnosis and perceived need of an expert advice.

Type 3 is by a suggestion of a third party. It may be friends, relatives or any others. This happens when someone other than the physician expresses a doubt about the treatment.

Advantages & Disadvantages

Many diagnostic discrepancies can be solved by a second opinion. A study in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practise showed that only 12% of the cases under the second opinion confirmed with the original diagnosis made in the first opinion. This clearly shows that when you go for a second opinion 1 out of every 5 people gets a different outcome. This may not only save the cost of treatment, but also the risk of over/ under treatment.

The major disadvantage is that the major stem of these SO seeking mainly comes from mere anxiety and thus it leads to a trend called ‘Doctor shopping’ which can prove to be a real burden for the patients and the systems. This can happen in the absence of a regulated mechanism.

Refresh your thoughts

Get SO’s only done if the symptoms continue to persist, or if diagnosed with major conditions. Go for it when you feel discomfort with the present doctor you consult.

To conclude

The need of the hour is the new mechanisms that help patients in the complicated process of seeking SO and provide them with specialists who are able to provide them with better alternatives.

Always keep in mind that we are living in a century where knowledge comes by a single tap at the tip of our fingers. So be smart enough to move in pace with the time and technology and hence become an active part in the healthcare.

Cashless

white oval medication pill beside blister pack

For even the little things can empty your pockets

When I started writing today, I was reminded of an old idiom – “Sometimes all that you need is a handful”. In this world of give and take, whatever you need comes at a cost. At least, it is true for modern healthcare in India. In our nation, sometimes an empty pocket can cost a life!

For a culture that acknowledges health as wealth, it is ironical that real wealth is destroyed because of the lack of money that should be spent on treatment. A visit to a hospital will easily unveil the current scenario of hospitals and healthcare facilities in our society. Many people are denied treatment just due to lack of money.

Lack of effective healthcare payment plans in India translates into a gross negligence of healthcare, even in well to do people. Things are even worse in the lower financial strata. Without a penny to pay even for their basic needs, thousands of people suffer from major illness without getting treated. Lakhs of people lose their lives because of denied treatment. Treatment denied is life denied!

Whereas financial capital is an important prerequisite to the sustainability of healthcare sector as an industry, a solution is required for it to become as much universally accessible as possible. In the current Indian scenario, the treatment of diseases from the common cold to dreadful cancer requires money. For a common man, this money is an important factor that determines one’s future. Many people save this money at the cost of their health. In order to reach its full potential, it is important for the healthcare industry to devise ways to make healthcare more affordable.

The old ways have proven to be full of errors, and yet, new hospitals are being established day by day, turning healthcare into an abode of rat-race where it’s certain that the common man will suffer. Let us make this a food for thought while thinking of healthcare in the future.

The Insurance Buzzword

As an alternative to the monetary woes of a common man, health insurance policies have been introduced. This has solved the issues up to a certain limit, however, it has still not been able to put the common man on the healthcare path. A major reason is their lack of knowledge. Even though health insurance is in its infancy, and not much is known about health insurance policies, even to many people who might be able to avail it!

A reason for this might be lack of penetration of insurance into the regular small-city ‘nursing-homes’ that make a large chunk of Indian healthcare sector. Moreover, the insurance companies in India are still utilizing the traditional marketing approaches rather than adopting marketing in unison with healthcare providers and other stakeholders in healthcare industry.

grayscale photo of person holding pen — Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

A need for change

The issue of fee for service payment model in Indian healthcare is at the core of our health woes. Everyone should be able to avail healthcare facilities. There should not be more sufferers. Adequate knowledge should be provided to the common man and more policies should be introduced to avail the treatments at a much lower cost.

However, more importantly, the healthcare industry should spearhead the change in affordability and profitability of their service. Co-creating policies with the patients and the common-man and collaborating across disciplines of insurance and finance shall hold key to the next wave of cashless healthcare.

No more lives should be lost because of denied treatments. .And no more tears because of empty pockets. Let the world smile. Let us build a happy world with a healthy mind & a healthy body. Let us all contribute to a change in healthcare!

Author: Ananya Chandra.