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Mental health can be just as important as physical health - and major depression is one of the most commonly diagnosed mental illnesses.

Mental health is often missing from public health debates even though it's critical to wellbeing.

Mental health needs a great deal of attention. It's the final taboo and it needs to be faced and dealt with.

Mental health can improve overall well-being and prevent other illnesses. And since mental health problems have a serious economic impact on vulnerable communities, making them a priority can save lives and markedly improve people's quality of life.

Sometimes, patients with serious mental illness, just as with other serious medical illnesses, require hospitalization. In the absence of available public or private hospital beds, there are few options.

Depression is an illness and not a necessary part of healthy living.

We readily go to the health club when our doctor suggests we need more exercise, but we regularly neglect the 'mental health club' that our well-being more truly requires.

Taking care of your mental and physical health is just as important as any career move or responsibility.

People talk about physical fitness, but mental health is equally important. I see people suffering, and their families feel a sense of shame about it, which doesn't help. One needs support and understanding. I am now working on an initiative to create awareness about anxiety and depression and help people.

In many parts of the world, chaining of people with mental illnesses is not uncommon, nor is seeing people walking around in clearly an unwell state, half naked, and no one takes any notice of them. It is tragic. There is a basic human right, which is not about just healthcare, but it is about the right to life with dignity, a right to citizenship.