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piqer for: Global finds Health and Sanity Doing Good
Bangalore-based Rashmi Vasudeva's journalism has appeared in many Indian and international publications over the past decade. A features writer with over nine years of experience heading a health and fitness supplement in a mainstream Indian newspaper, her niche areas include health, wellness, fitness, food, nutrition and Indian classical Arts.
Her articles have appeared in various publications including Mint-Wall Street Journal, The Hindu, Deccan Herald (mainstream South Indian newspaper), Smart Life (Health magazine from the Malayala Manorama Group of publications), YourStory (India's media technology platform for entrepreneurs), Avantika (a noir arts and theatre magazine), ZDF (a German public broadcasting company) and others.
In 2006, she was awarded the British Print-Chevening scholarship to pursue a short-term course in new-age journalism at the University of Westminster, U.K. With a double Masters in Globalisation and Media Studies from Aarhus Universitet (Denmark), University of Amsterdam and Swansea University in Wales, U.K., she has also dabbled in academics, travel writing and socio-cultural studies. Mother to a frisky toddler, she hums 'wheels on the bus' while working and keeps a beady eye on the aforementioned toddler's antics.
How The Mentally Ill In India Are Doused In Medication (And What This Is Doing To Them)
India's health burdens are huge and arguably the most tragic of these burdens is that of mental health – or the lack of it.
The situation is bleak and harsh. Nearly 60 million Indians suffer from mental disorder but only 10 per cent have access to mental healthcare. There are only 3 psychiatrists per 1 million people, and yet, India's budget for mental healthcare is 0.06 per cent, even smaller than that of its geographically tiny neighbour Bangladesh.
The statistics are worrying, to say the least, but they narrate only a part of the story. The rest of this wretched tale is made up of a whole spectrum of challenges — from faulty parenting to patriarchy to gender roles to poor quality of psychiatry, to name just a few.
This series tries to examine these ‘other’ challenges, beginning with how polypharmacy (the use of several drugs to treat illnesses) is further endangering the health of the already ill. While it is heartening to see that someone is at last writing about this issue in depth – a rare occurrence nowadays in a media landscape obsessed with politics, religion and entertainment – it still is a distressing read. For instance, it tells the story of a patient who at one point was on three anti-psychotic pills and other drugs to treat nicotine dependency and alcohol withdrawal, both of which the patient had taken to in order to combat the side-effects caused by the main drugs he was taking to treat his schizophrenia.
The psychiatrists the author speaks to admit that polypharmacy is practiced, often indiscriminately and without the patient’s informed consent. In a country like India with low medical literacy, it can end up worsening the patient's condition. Many of the doctors interviewed believe overmedication is a legacy of the British era “when the idea of dealing with mental illness wasn't to treat it but to get it out of sight.”
A comprehensive social policy to improve mental health literacy as well as budgetary allocations to enhance mental healthcare might improve matters somewhat.
