Interface in approaches to mental disorder in India

Abstract

The main objective of this thesis is to explore the interface between approaches to mental newlinedisorder in India. It is a study in psychiatric sociology because the thesis attempts to newlineexamine not just the organic approach but also the socio-cultural approach to mental newlinedisorder, underlining its significance under the rubric of different systems including newlinepsychiatry. newlineVarious systems of healing in India address mental disorder from different newlineperspectives and with varied results. It is not sought here to establish the efficacy of one newlinesystem of health and healing over the other; rather the focus is on exploring the newlinepossibilities of systems of health and healing interfacing, despite being based on disparate newlineontologies and epistemologies. How do systems addressing mental disorder interface and newlineunder what conditions? What allows for or inhibits interface and what role do newlinepractitioners play, are some of the questions that this study has attempted to answer. newlineBefore examining the phenomenon of interface among these disparate systems, it is newlineimportant to underline that two distinct conceptual/paradigmatic positions can be newlineidentified in drawing out the discourse of mental disorder in general; these have an newlineimportant bearing on the systems of health as well. A distinct contiguous shift can also be newlinetraced in the attitude and treatment of those deemed to be mentally ill. This shift is not newlinejust conceptual but also ontological and epistemological. One looks at mental illness in newlineterms of socio-cultural factors and the other locates its aetiology primarily in an organic newlineor physiological base. They refer to the socio-cultural model and the organic model newlinerespectively. newlineThese two clear epistemologies, while distinct, are neither absolute nor completely newlinedisconnected in the context of explaining mental disorder. A historical tracing of these newlinetwo epistemological positions will reveal that, at a point in time, one paradigm assumed newlinesignificance and received much attention and fillip;