The stigma around mental and emotional health still runs very deep in India. Due to a very serious lack of support and health care, mental wellness and wellbeing can very quickly deteriorate, leading to soaring suicide risks amongst those who are mentally ill. Many Indian villagers still believe that bad spirits are to blame for mental health problems, and this causes a great deal of fear and social stigma, especially in rural communities. The focus now is on training up community-based workers who specialise in mental health.
Due to the extreme lack of understanding surrounding mental health in India, many people see somebody who is suffering from a mental health problem and genuinely believe that the person is invaded by angry spirits, who are punishing the person for some kind of wrongdoing in a past life (such as killing a cow). Therapy often involves a witch doctor who, alongside the family of the afflicted person, chain up mentally ill people, chant spells at them, poke them with pins or even beat them in an attempt to ‘force out the evil spirits’.
Dr. Indira Sharma, who is the president of the Indian Psychiatric Society confirms that there is very little awareness about mental problems as real illnesses. Most people in India, he claims, still think that mental illness is an imagined things, and he confirms that the stigma is still very serious.
The population of India is around 1.2 billion and yet there are only around 4,000 trained psychiatrists in the whole of India, compared with, for example, the 50,000 in the United States (4,500 of which are in California alone). In recent years, however, the Indian government has increased spending in the area of mental health in an attempt to curb the ever-rising suicide rates in the country.
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