Life
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
`Superstitions breed psychotic symptoms'
K.A.Ashok Pai and Rajani.
TACKLING VILLAGE sorcerers and victims of ``black magic'' is all in a day's work for them. Besides running a 100-bed exclusive psychiatric treatment centre in Shimoga, K.A.Ashok Pai and his wife, Rajani, are active in involving rural soothsayers and temple archaks in their psychiatric care work.
Dr. Pai and Ms. Rajani, who were in Bangalore to participate in a phone-in counselling programme aired on Chandana TV channel, have travelled widely under a number of international fellowship programmes.
They emphasise that superstitious beliefs and fears and the resulting psychotic behavioural changes are found in all communities and regions across the world.
Their focus is on the rural communities in the Malnad area but they have also dealt with similar situations in villages close to Bangalore.
Certain incidents stand out in Dr. Pai's memory, like the 18-year-old Muslim girl with deep psychotic symptoms who was convinced it was the month of Ramzan and refused to eat for weeks together, though it was not the season for fasting.
"Her condition was so bad that we had to give her almost lethal doses of sedatives to calm her,'' he remembers. An idea came to his mind -- to use the services of a moulvi who himself was under psychiatric treatment.
The moulvi tried some tough talk and hard persuasion, even quoting from the scriptures to convince the girl that it was actually ``sinful'' to fast. The girl recovered and was weaned from her medication.
A well-known case, partially solved, was the age-old practice of ``nude worship'' at the Chadragutti Temple in Sorab taluk, home-turf of S.Bangarappa.
"The archaks and soothsayers in the temple literally `put the fear of god' in the minds of superstitious villagers and force them into this form of worship,'' Dr. Pai explains.
Throughout the rural areas superstitions breed psychotic symptoms, like the Catholics of Dakshina Kannada whose fears and guilt feelings emerge stronger after their weekly ``confessions'' at church.
In all such cases, what Dr. Pai has successfully done is to convince the priests or soothsayers to persuade the affected persons also to seek psychiatric help. "The priests become counsellors and everybody is satisfied,'' he remarks.
By K.Satyamurty
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Life
Bangalore
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Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
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