Questions are raised about an approach towards psychiatric epidemiology, which directly imports models in medicine to count disorders of the mind to produce staggering evidence to the effect that 11% of Indians suffer from mental disorders. An alternative psychiatric epidemiology is needed, which relies on the principles of slow research, is value-based, and which defines mental health as an ethical and political problem.
The roping in of tertiary care mental health institutes by the government in providing individualised (tele) counselling services to migrant workers needs to be viewed with caution. Instead of acting as a catalyst in upholding the dignity and human rights of migrant daily wage workers who were left high and dry, mental health practice, shaped by political and institutional influences, provided “counselling” to lakhs of people who bore the brunt of governmental apathy during the pandemic crisis.
Paternalistic governance of mental health practices and advocacy fail to locate mental health problems in the broader spectrum of personal, social, political, and economic lives.
