Abstract
It is well known that the experience of mental illness is different in the Western and non-Western countries. The genesis of mental suffering has cultural and historical roots. When suffering comes from a social milieu, can its solutions come from another social context? Instead of blindly pursuing mental health models of the West, developing and traditional societies need to understand their problems within their own socio-historical contexts. This chapter is an autoethnographic account of how this researcher has been trying to grapple with some broader issues related to mental health in India. In this chapter, four narratives are presented which relate to the experiences of one independent researcher, who is also a member of a non-profit organization. These storied accounts explicate on the difficulties of rehabilitation in mental health, in a society where people face insurmountable barriers due to disabilities in the past and in current circumstances. This chapter raises questions about the manner research criteria are established in Indian universities, what constitutes legitimate research and what should a research agenda be for a society that wants to carve its own possibilities of intervention. These experiences are presented to highlight the socio-cultural imperatives of dealing with mental health issues in a developing country like India.
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Notes
- 1.
It has its moorings in social construction, so the word collaborative and essentially it is a new method of counselling that I am working on.
- 2.
This is my preferred usage, over the phrase survivor researcher, for I consider myself emancipated from the linguistic dominance of psychiatric classification, which made me believe that I was a bipolar in disorder for two decades of my life.
- 3.
At the time of writing this paper, I was located in the north Indian state of Haryana, which is adjacent to the capital of New Delhi. I lived there from October 2007 to March 2014. The incidents I reported here were some of my interactions which happened both in New Delhi and Haryana.
- 4.
I am a performing artist as well.
- 5.
I could not sustain myself and the non-profit for long, winding it off by 2017.
- 6.
This was published in a Journal of Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-011-0126-6.
- 7.
A government scheme for universal primary education in India. Though it is undoubtedly the biggest mechanism to reach the benefits of education to the last child in the country, it has somewhat questionable outcomes that I am aware of, as I have had occasions to interact with their resource personnel on many a platform, including in advocating to them about art education.
- 8.
In this effort several senior and retired academics have also assisted me to gain access in those departments imparting B.Ed. degrees. However, given their retired status they have not had the capacity to go beyond introducing me to the concerned people; who have frequently expressed great interest in the many sides of my work but never really got down to creating any access to their students.
- 9.
I have encountered this once long back at the time of my admission to college, when a clerk held back my admission just because I came a year late to apply, though I was within the qualifying cut-off of marks. Eventually after much deliberation, representation and cajoling though I got admission to the college, it made my entry experience a painful one, whose blemishes lasted for long and perhaps somewhere laid the foundation of my painful years in college that culminated in my ‘breakdown’.
- 10.
Several months later another professor of English approached him to discuss my case, without knowing of this dialogue; and he was still adamant. She tried to think of many options but none seemed to work, because the whole issue came to what department I would fit into. I was doubly marginalized this way—marginalized once due to my illness and second time due to not being able to claim that I had been ill!
- 11.
I entered into Ph.D. research in July 2016, with a wholly different proposal and idea.
- 12.
Names have been changed to protect individuals concerned.
- 13.
She was in a master’s course in art, from which she had to drop out just before completion of the course, due to a suicide attempt which had followed after an experiment with drugs and other substances.
- 14.
Which she came dressed in, a contrast to her mother and her office colleague. Perhaps if she had been with youngsters her own age it would not have been so visible even to me—but with the older people it stood out in bold contrast.
- 15.
I live alone with four dogs for the last several years. My sister lives a few houses away from mine and my parents live in Delhi. For all practical purposes I am a single person.
- 16.
At the time Janaki came another elderly friend of mine was staying at my house for the whole month and the guest room was occupied. So I requested my sister to allow her to stay in her house, while she would work in my house for the whole day, or whatever she would work.
- 17.
I consider these daily activities of running a home very significant for everyone—men and women, as they are activities which are required on a regular basis and one must be able to manage one’s basic life issues before we become capable to accepting employments where we have to report to another person regularly. Management of day-to-day potentially stressful situations can be therapeutic and non-threatening especially within safe domestic spaces. Needless to say we also acquire many management skills along the way, as also a certain element of discipline.
- 18.
My own manic states have been very acute, so I can make out the difference between acute and less acute states.
- 19.
For the first time I felt as though the tables had been turned on me—for after two decades, I stood in the company of someone who was ‘hypomanic’, whereas I would have been the one experiencing it all these years. Strangely enough seeing her then, I just knew exactly how she would be feeling inside and I also suddenly knew how my family would have felt all those years when they saw me in similar or worse states. And though I knew what exactly could be done to engage her, did I have the time, the resources and the people around me who could assist me?
- 20.
My sister has also seen me for a long time in very acute psychotic states, so as an outsider she was good judge of telling me how well Janaki was faring. From her observations I knew that the girl was indeed very excitable, disturbed, scattered and dissipated. But my sister also pointed out to me that she had seen me in worse states than that.
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Sharma, P. (2018). The Rude, Rough, Friendless Rehab Road—Chasing Mental Health. In: Misra, G. (eds) Psychosocial Interventions for Health and Well-Being. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-3782-2_20
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