Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Chronic relationships and mental health care: global pharmaceuticals in a local healing shrine in India

Chronic relationships and mental health care: global pharmaceuticals in a local healing shrine in... Abstract The paper explores how chronicities and chronic relationships are fostered at a state-sponsored community psychiatry clinic that has been affiliated with a Sufi shrine in western India. The clinic provides free psychotropic treatment to patients, most of whom are pilgrims visiting the shrine. While the clinic has been lauded for its collaborative approach of blending ‘medicine and prayer’ in the provision of mental health care, observations of clinical encounters reflect the prevalence of a strongly medicalized perspective of mental illness, where local narratives of distress are reframed as globalized categories of mental disorder, thereby permitting pharmacological intervention. Importantly, in a context where free medicines are offered just as other freebies are in development initiatives in India, this results in the creation of long-term, ‘chronic’ relationships with patients who only seem to return for medicines, never recovering. This paper illustrates how ‘chronicity’, in many ways, is built into the project from the beginning itself. It becomes evident in the assumptions of the officials and psychiatrists that mental illness is chronic, in the case files of patients that record their consultation and medication histories, and in the clinical conversations about the importance of compliance to treatment. Given that historically, community mental health emerged in the context of reducing long hospital stays and deinstitutionalizing mental health care, it is important to reflect on how these policies and practices result in the creation of a cadre of chronic out-patients. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Anthropology and Medicine Taylor & Francis

Chronic relationships and mental health care: global pharmaceuticals in a local healing shrine in India

Anthropology and Medicine , Volume 30 (2): 18 – Apr 3, 2023
18 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/taylor-francis/chronic-relationships-and-mental-health-care-global-pharmaceuticals-in-v7QVULxdMv

References (49)

Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
ISSN
1469-2910
eISSN
1364-8470
DOI
10.1080/13648470.2023.2212212
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Abstract The paper explores how chronicities and chronic relationships are fostered at a state-sponsored community psychiatry clinic that has been affiliated with a Sufi shrine in western India. The clinic provides free psychotropic treatment to patients, most of whom are pilgrims visiting the shrine. While the clinic has been lauded for its collaborative approach of blending ‘medicine and prayer’ in the provision of mental health care, observations of clinical encounters reflect the prevalence of a strongly medicalized perspective of mental illness, where local narratives of distress are reframed as globalized categories of mental disorder, thereby permitting pharmacological intervention. Importantly, in a context where free medicines are offered just as other freebies are in development initiatives in India, this results in the creation of long-term, ‘chronic’ relationships with patients who only seem to return for medicines, never recovering. This paper illustrates how ‘chronicity’, in many ways, is built into the project from the beginning itself. It becomes evident in the assumptions of the officials and psychiatrists that mental illness is chronic, in the case files of patients that record their consultation and medication histories, and in the clinical conversations about the importance of compliance to treatment. Given that historically, community mental health emerged in the context of reducing long hospital stays and deinstitutionalizing mental health care, it is important to reflect on how these policies and practices result in the creation of a cadre of chronic out-patients.

Journal

Anthropology and MedicineTaylor & Francis

Published: Apr 3, 2023

Keywords: Chronicities; ritual; care; pharmaceuticals; somatization

There are no references for this article.