'Train folk healers to deal with mentally-ill patients'

Even as a section of the medical community is at loggerheads with traditional (folk) healers and spiritual leaders who claim to cure mental illnesses, psychologists at the 38th national annual conference of the Indian Association of Clinical Psychologists (IACP) called for doctors to join hands with non-specialists to deal with mental health problems. Many such interesting and otherwise controversial subjects were discussed at the recently-conducted conference in Pune.

Clinical psychologist Radhika Bapat, also the organising secretary of the conference, spoke to Alifiya Khan about the highlights of the conference…

What difference had you hoped to make with this conference?
This was the first platform on which psychologists and trained doctors openly talked about working jointly with non-specialists such as traditional or folk healers in rural areas.

Until now, doctors only advised patients not to go to these people, as they are incapable of treating them. But since the patients are emotionally attached to such beliefs, they usually stop coming to the doctor for treatment and start seeing traditional healers.

As a result, the patient is lost, and no help can be extended to the person. So, it is important to establish links with non-specialists in order to reach the patient.

How can non-specialists help mentally ill people?
Specialists do not wish to practise in rural areas because of low income. In these cases, non-specialists are the first point of contact for patients, and they play an important role in diagnosing the illness. Once trained properly, non-specialists can play a crucial role in delivering basic psychological treatment and identifying serious illnesses that need referral, besides convincing family members about the treatment.

Besides non-specialists, what other issues were discussed at the conference?
The most important issue discussed was the need for adopting interdisciplinary approach, i.e. better liaison between doctors. For example, a patient comes to a speech therapist, who realises that the patient needs help from neurologists.

Even if the particular hospital does not have that facility, doctors do not refer patients to other hospitals fearing that the patients will stop coming to him. The specialists from allied fields need to work together in interest of the patient. We discussed this in detail hoping to improve referral system by initiating dialogue.

What new therapies were discussed at the conference?
The latest advances in therapy that shows some promise is arts-based therapy (ABT). Practitioners of this therapy, who are trained psychologists, presented their research using various forms of art at the conference. Most importantly, this conference discussed India-centric problems. Usually, our conferences focus on Western data, but this conference discussed problems like farmer suicides and local problems such as treatment practices involving ghosts, jinns and spirits. The conference also looked at local solutions to solve these problems.