Indian and Western Psychiatry: A Comparison

Abstract

The average Indian practises the opposite doctrines of modernism and traditionalism, reflecting both the strength and the weakness of the culture. Indian psychiatrists have expressed concern over the suitability of Western psychotherapy for Indian patients. Earlier findings were that depressive illness was uncommon in India and that Indian patients rarely complained of depressed mood. The contents of delusional thinking in Indian patients suffering from paranoid states and schizophrenia have been analysed. An attentuated form of koro, a syndrome characterised by fear of retraction of the penis into the abdomen, is familiar to psychiatrists in India. The healers are able to manage neurotic states, hysterical psychoses, convulsions and dissociative states while directing cases of major psychosis to psychiatrists. This appears different from Western psychiatry, which is free from indigenous healers. There is nothing like prison psychiatry in India except that separate enclosures for criminal patients are arranged in some mental hospitals.