Thoughts from Bangalore, India: The East Teaching the West in Mental
Health
When discussing global mental health, the conversation often
focuses on whether psychiatrists can practice outside of their cultural
context. What we sometimes forget is that psychiatric illness is organic
illness of the brain, affecting equally large percentages of the world
population from nation to nation. Illnesses such as bipolar disorder, autism,
depression, OCD, schizophrenia and other mental diseases occur beyond cultural
boundaries and they deserve a global conversation. We know that Western thought and philosophy
in this area is only about 150 years old; this begs the question of how ancient
civilizations effectively treated mental illness.
Through my Partners Center of Expertise grant, I’ve been
involved in some psychiatric cultural studies at the National Institute of
Mental Health and Neuroscience (NIMHANS), a central government research
institute pushing forward the fields of psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience
in India. Here, they have an Advanced Center of Yoga where they are building
modules of yoga postures to treat various mental illnesses. In modern society,
yoga has been considered a type of exercise, but traditional yoga born and
propagated throughout India, is a multifaceted way of life used to help
practitioners increase their self awareness, flexibility in thought, and
feelings of security. It focuses on a holistic sense of health, a beneficial
perspective in mental illness. The Advanced Center for Yoga at NIMHANS is
running multiple studies in yoga and has recently published a supplement in the
Indian Journal of Psychiatry. This describes multiple controlled studies that
show yoga improves quality of life and sleep in elderly, has antidepressant
affects on the general public, and improves symptoms of ADHC, psychosis,
dementia, and memory. The center has made yoga a standard therapeutic
intervention and I have been lucky to be invited to experience the clinical
treatment of patients here.
Here is the entrance area to the Yoga Center at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience
This is a class that uses the yoga model for anxiety related illness.
Jhilam Biswas, MD
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