The history of Psychiatry is rich in the Indian Subcontinent. Numerous records point out the fact that Psychiatry held an important position in the medical system practised in India. A rich trail of documents exists charting out the development of psychiatry and psychiatry education in India. But are those documents being preserved for posterity?
With this question, we turned to the experts, Dr. Sanjeev Jain (Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychiatry, NIMHANS) and Dr. Pratima Murthy (Ex Director, NIMHANS) to learn about all the historical records of Psychiatry in India and what is being done to archive them. The opening remarks to the academic session were given by IPS President Dr. T.S. Sathyanarayana Rao, Vice-President Dr. Om Prakash Singh, Honorary General Secretary Dr. Arun V. Marwale, Honorary Treasurer Dr. Laxmi Naresh Vadlamani, Editor of the Indian Journal of Psychiatry, Dr. Sujit Sarkhel, and Head of the IPS faculty development subcommittee Dr. M. Kishor.
Dr Sanjeev Jain illuminated the rich history of Psychiatry in India and elaborated on all the various scattered documents. The highlight of his talks was how Indian medical services required compulsory Asylum experience in the 1800s. He also talked about various historical books, like Drugs from India by Garcia d’Orta (1691), Insanity in India by G.F.W. Ewens (1902), and Modern Methods in Psychiatry by Julian Norman Pacheco. He ended with his Call to Action for students and faculty, encouraging them to get their hands dirty interacting with old records, patients and senior practitioners.
Dr. Pratima Murthy discussed her own personal experiences with the archiving and elaborated on ongoing projects like NIMHANS Archiving Digital Initiative (NADI), which aims to preserve and provide access to a vast array of digitised case records and registers spanning decades of psychiatry development in India. She also mentioned NIMHANS heritage which was inaugurated with the intention to house historical records and document the transition from early lunatic asylums to modern psychiatric institutes. The session had the presence of senior eminent psychiatrists like Dr. Mohan Isaac, who also emphasised the high need for the initiative.
Warm Regards,
Dr. Priyash Jain
Editor, Minds Newsletter
