For Ira Khan, mental health has never been a straight road. There are good days and bad ones, periods when treatment works and moments when she knows she needs to ask for help again. After nearly nine years in therapy, she says she’s in a steadier place with her depression now, though she knows that stability won’t last forever. Today, as a mental health advocate, she is interested in something much bigger than therapy — how we learn, build relationships, cope with change and simply get through life.In an interview with Bangalore Times, she reflects on her childhood, growing up in the public eye and why AI can never replace human connection. Excerpts:‘I began telling myself not to show when I was upset’One of the earliest internal dialogues Ira had with herself was about what kind of person deserved love. “When I was growing up, I wanted to be a broken person who was physically very strong,” she says, describing childhood fantasies shaped by spy films like the James Bond series. She imagined being someone who could keep other people’s secrets no matter what happened to her. Her therapist later helped her recognise the pattern: “It seemed like I thought that the only way to be loved is if you’re a slightly broken person who then saves the day.”She connects this partly to how she processed her parents’ divorce. Although her parents, actor Aamir Khan and producer Reena Dutta, made sure the family stayed close and that there was stability for their children, Ira says she interpreted the absence of conflict as a sign that the divorce was “not bad enough.”She recalls, “In my perception, it was so normalised that I thought it was not bad enough. I began telling myself not to show when I was upset and to simply carry on. So I feel like I kind of walked myself into isolating, keeping things inside,” she says. She remembers even telling herself to “bottle this up so that one day it’ll burst.”
If anything is ever on the internet, it’s going to be on the internet forever. I told myself, ‘don’t look, don’t read.’ It’s the only way to survive
Ira Khan
‘My parents come with me to the psychiatrist’Ira realised she needed professional help during college when she stopped eating. “Everything else I could still pass off as, ‘I don’t understand why this is happening. I don’t know what’s going on,’” she recalls, “But when I stopped eating, I was like, people are not supposed to stop eating.”That was when she reached out to her mother. “I’ve had to ask for help multiple times, not just once, because it’s not a linear journey,” she says, adding, “Whenever I need, they come with me to the psychiatrist. I feel completely comfortable with my parents.”‘If anything is ever on the internet, it’s going to be on the internet forever’Ira doesn’t feel her mental health struggles are solely due to her in the public eye. But it has had an impact. One lesson she learnt early was to be careful about what she put out into the world. If she was uncomfortable with a photograph, she learnt not to take it in the first place. “If anything is ever on the internet, it’s going to be on the internet forever,” she says. “When I turned 18, I started getting objectified,” she adds. Her response was to shut the noise out. “I told myself, ‘Don’t look, don’t read.’ It’s the only way to survive. I shut it out completely, I don’t read comments, I don’t check any of those things,” Ira shares.‘I strongly encourage people to go out and make friends’On the growing use of AI chatbots for emotional support, Ira sees both the appeal and the danger. “I think AI is a tool. Like all tools, it has pros and cons,” she says. But she remains wary of technology that is still poorly understood: “The worry about AI is that it’s a tool that we don’t understand.”She also understands why people turn to chatbots, particularly when professional help can be expensive, difficult to access or limited by short appointments. “I see why someone would talk to a chatbot,” she says. AI, she suggests, can be useful for information or helping someone prepare for professional care — for example, figuring out “the top five questions I should ask” when there are only 10 minutes with a clinician.But she draws the line at replacing human connection. “I would strongly encourage people to go out and make friends,” she says, adding, “Everybody’s sad and lonely and everybody wants friends.”
It’s really important to get help early because the chances of you getting better are higher. Having good mental health makes your life much easier
Ira Khan
‘If today’s a bad day, try again tomorrow’Ira’s battle with depression became the foundation for her mental health advocacy. “Because of my depression, I got really scared of the whole concept,” she says. Her privilege also made her question how people with fewer resources cope. “If I have so much privilege, and it was so horrible for me, then I don’t know how other people are surviving this.”She founded the Agatsu Foundation, a nonprofit focused on helping people seek care for mental illness, in 2021. The early years were difficult. “I didn’t realise that I was going through a depressive episode at that time,” she says, describing symptoms including difficulty concentrating, indecisiveness and low confidence — all of which made running an organisation harder. Now, she says, “it’s going really well.”She also urges people to seek support early. “If today’s a bad day, wake up tomorrow and try again. It’s really important to get help early because the chances of you getting better are higher,” she says, comparing it to getting off the wrong train sooner rather than later. “Having good mental health makes your life much easier,” she adds.
