A recent advertisement by a cement company features actor Ranbir Kapoor locked in a bare room, speaking incoherently and behaving irrationally. It ends with Kapoor, now dressed as a doctor, reassuring the audience that the person inside cannot escape because the room is built with strong cement. The commercial may have been intended as harmless humour. But it reflects a disturbing insensitivity towards mental illness. It turns mental illness into a spectacle for entertainment. Behaviour associated with psychological distress is caricatured and presented as comedy. This reinforces the deeply damaging stereotype that people with mental-health conditions are objects of ridicule rather than individuals deserving empathy, treatment and dignity.

Even more troubling is the underlying message that such individuals should be confined. The imagery is impossible to........

© Indian Express