“A mentally retarded 10-year-old girl living in the temple run over by the truck found dead in inhuman conditions.”
“Mentally ill patients tied with chains in the temple corridor and moved around with the same chains.”
A lack of awareness of mental health, coupled with the stigma attached to it, in Indian society leaves the mentally ill in deep water. These problems further manifest when they try to seek help. Often, they are not provided proper psychiatric treatment, assuming that their illness would just go away or by associating it with shame and guilt. Even if they are taken for treatment, it is rarely scientific psychiatric treatment but mostly traditional healing methods out of the unshakeable belief of the divine and the distrust towards scientific psychiatric treatment.
The instances mentioned above highlight what happens to the mentally ill who languish in deplorable conditions rather than getting any better. These instances are an everyday tale in centres of faith healing, which are believed to have curative and restorative properties for the mentally ill in India. These centres, ranging from the Chamatkari Hanuman Mandir of Madhya Pradesh and the Baba Ramdev temple of Rajasthan to Chottanikkara and the clinics of Kerala, operated by families and so on, work for the treatment of psychiatric problems relying on faith healing and Tantric methods.
According to a study reported to the WHO, at least 6.5% of the Indian population suffers from serious mental disorders. Despite this, mental illness is barely talked about in the country, not because it is a rare phenomenon but because of the taboo, the ‘uneasiness’ attached to it.
Traditionally, India has had its own set of explanatory concepts to address mental health rooted in indigenous systems such as Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani, along with remedies and religious practices of rituals, charms and chants administered to the patients by traditional practitioners such as shamans, vaids, mantravadis and patris in shrines and temples. Though these make up a rather vast repertoire of ways to tackle mental disorder, there has been a stigmatised approach to mental health care in Indian society.
In India, the modern psychiatry, as part of the medicalised western approach to mental health, also remains under a cloud. To most of the Indian population, psychiatry behind closed door remains an alien discourse. It simply isn’t the Indian way to lock away our mentally ill in isolated wards in the hope that they will get better like they do in the west. These beliefs are inculcated so deep in the Indian psyche that the number of people who flock to temples for ‘faith healing’, taking the help of ojhas and bhagats remains undiminshed. There seems to be a surprisingly high distrust towards western medicine and little rejection of these traditional notions of healing. There is no discernible difference among them based on their educational, financial or social background.
However, led by blind faith, these centres of faith healing turn to the detriment of these patients themselves. They end up being a dumping ground for the mentally ill who are often treated inhumanely upon abandonment by their families. The caregivers including children who decide to keep up with their
ailing relative sometimes themselves fall prey to this illness due to the sick and dark milieu of such temples. Mention of such ill-treatment at these temples are not unheard-of but seldom does one hear any mention of healing of any sort.
In India, one thing that cannot be taken away from people is their faith. The scenario of mental health in India should not be an exception. It is quite possible to combine the discipline of modern psychiatry with the rich philosophical heritage of the past, thus creating an unprecedented and rich basis for the development of mental health programmes that will serve the people well yet be in harmony with their culture. The development of new-generation drugs has made managing these illnesses much easier and long incarceration of the mentally ill in isolated spaces is no longer required, if at all this leaves behind some hesitations, some taboo, it can be dealt with affirmations and the support of religion and faith. The conversations about mental health and its diagnosis have to be brought under the sunlight, in the open away from the grab of stigma and shame. People need to be taught to take actions when their faith becomes exploitative rather than staying under the blindfold of faith. It needs to be understood that their illness just like any other physical illness doesn’t render the patients unfit for humane treatment and shouldn’t be used as an escape from respecting the humanity of humans.
oshinmalpani4@gmail.com
