How to make friends in india?

The past 7 years of my life have been dominated by two central themes- the first phase , from 2003 to 2006 being dominated by B12 deficiency and its disastrous effects on my memory, mood and of course, academics and career. Then the second phase , from 2006 onwards dominated by mental illness - something which has destroyed whatever i had in life.
Both these central themes have one thing in common- they are taboos in this country. B12 deficiency is extremely common in india, yet few know about it. There is little awareness ,either amongst the general public or the doctors, despite its alarming prevalence. Most probably, the absurd lack of awareness of such a common disease is due to the fact that this condition is linked to vegetarianism. In a country where many communities consider eating meat a ghastly sin, awareness about any medical condition related to this religious practice would be almost nil.

Due to cognitive and memory decline , my performance in academics during the most crucial phase of my career, declined greatly, and ultimately i fell prey to the stress and humiliation of watching one's career destroyed before my very eyes . I succumbed to full-blown mental illness- depression, anxiety, OCD . This destroyed attempts to revive my career, and has left me with no choice other than joining a substandard distance education course, which , has proved to be a simple case of fraud.

I have joined social networking sites like Facebook and DailyStrength, and i have made a great number of friends there with history of mental illness, but my greatest complain has that been that hardly any of those friends are from my own country, India. Understandable , since there is almost nil awareness of mental illness in india, so there its extremely difficult to find a mentally ill person , or someone who knows a mentally ill person. I have a strong suspicion that most mentally ill people in india simply commit suicide, as the society considers their problems to be symptoms of cowardice and weakness , instead of a severe illness. Unable to bear the double burden of severe suffering and the humiliation and condemnation, most of them commit suicide, and the Indian police force would register a criminal case under IPC.( Attempting suicide is considered illegal in india )

When i had gone to my distance education psychology class, i had told my classmates that i had joined this course due to my background in mental illness. Most of them just responded with puzzled faces . It was clear that even they did not know what mental illness is. I had thought that atleast students who have come to study psychology , would know something about mental illness, but it was clear that even they wondered what on earth was mental illness .
But i have noticed something else- that when i tell my facebook friends about the reality of B12 deficiency , most of my foreign friends seem to read and respond, but indian friends do not. It seems that they are too offended by the reality that their religious customs can make people severely ill.

It seems that Indian society is extremely immature and backward even today, and continues to have taboos ,superstitions, prejudices and lack of awareness about very important and basic issues. And i have been a victim of two of these taboos one after another.....