'Boils my blood': Bombay Shaving Co.'s Shantanu Deshpande slams Florida hate crime on Indian nurse, warns against misuse of mental health excuses

The recent brutal attack on 67-year-old Indian nurse Leelamma Lal in Florida by a psychiatric patient has sparked widespread outrage. Slamming the incident, Bombay Shaving Company Founder-CEO Shantanu Deshpande took to LinkedIn to share his frustration over two dangerous trends that have emerged in recent years -- the use of mental health as an excuse for bad behavior and the "pathological use of therapese in everyday struggles".

"The vicious and racist attack on 67YO Indian nurse Leelamma Lal boils my blood," Deshpande said in his post in reference to the hate crime incident that allegedly almost killed Lal and left all her facial bones fractured. 

The attacker, Stephen Scantlebury, 33, was reportedly motivated by the victim's skin colour. 

"But, what is even more angering, is his family making claims of 'mental instability' as a legal reason to minimize punishment," Deshpande said, adding, "The above is an extreme case, but people have begun using anxiety/OCD/bipolar or whatever self-diagnosis they do for being verbally aggressive, lashing out, being insulting etc with ZERO accountability. They feel an admission of some kind of mental health situation absolves them of any responsibility".

Another issue, according to Deshpande, is the problematic use of "therapese", a language of therapy terms that exaggerates everyday struggles. Terms like "toxic work-culture" and "childhood trauma" are employed liberally to describe routine human interactions. 

"Suddenly everyone has the weapons of 'therapy words' and is using it for what I can only imagine to be attention and sympathy seeking behaviour... The awareness of mental health over the last decade or so has been such a crucial and important element of our progress as society," the post read. 
 

Deshpande went on to warn that this casual use of psychological language not only misrepresents reality but also diminishes the genuine struggles faced by individuals with legitimate mental health issues. "Flippant usage of words and self-diagnoses trivializes the real struggles of people who suffer and regresses these efforts," he said.

Later in comments, Deshpande clarified that his post is not a call to ignore mental health issues. ""But overzealous and under informed usage of these results to real issues being ignored," he explained.