Reimagining Mental Health Approach Through Indian Perspectives

Abstract

India is a largest country (population wise) of the world, where residing 1.464 billion people, but still they have not their own theory, practice, approaches, and model in the area of mental health. Most of the psychiatry practice in India is guided and imported by the western approach, which have largely ignored the role of religion, family, eastern philosophy and medicine in understanding and managing the psychiatric disorders. Even, the research on mental health conducted in India utilizes the European perspectives and hardly have we used Indian perspectives to understand Indian reality. We resist the imposition of the European beliefs, values, thinking and life style in the name of social emancipation, empowerment and justice. Historically there is no evidence to show that the European values, thought or life style has empowered or uplifted any people in the third world. The western concepts in mental health practice would therefore be extremely short-sighted and unproductive. From last couple of decadesfew of the mental health professional have attempted to develop Indian perspective drawing inspiration from our rich cultural and philosophical wisdom, their works have been side-lined by the Eurocentric intellectuals who dominated the discourse with the help of government machinery.