Mental Health in Ancient India & Its Relevance to Modern Psychiatry

Esteemed fellows and members of IPS, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all to this conference in this historic city of Bhubaneswar close to the holy land of Lord Jagdish. I am grateful to the members of IPS for giving me an opportunity to serve the highest office for one year. At various occasions in the past in last two and half decades as a student of psychiatry I have heard the leaders of Indian psychiatry, past president of IPS and academicians involved in psychiatric education and research like Prof. J.S. Neki, Prof. Venkoba Rao, Prof. N.N. Wig, Prof. R.L. Kapoor, Prof. D.N. Nandi and many others stating that we must develop Indian models of psychotherapy for Indian patients and they should be culturally oriented, western models of psychotherapy being not so well suited'for Indian patients. In order to develop Indian models we have to have adequate knowledge of our heritage, how complexities of mind have been understood in the past and how there has been a subtle transfer of attitude from generation to generation without really having a formal education of this subject. I thought it would be appropriate to title my presidential address as "Mental health in Indian ancient India and its relevance to modern psychiatry". According to Hindu mythology the age of human race on the earth is over 8 million years which has been divided in foui YugsSatyug which lasted for 5.6 million years, Treta which lasted for 1 4 million years, Dwapar which lasted for 4 68 lacs years and the present yug the Kaliyug which started about 5000 years ago will last for 232000 years. Modern Geologists tell us that the earth is 4500 million years old and the earliest forms of life (Protozoic) appeared 2700 million years ago. Two million years ago we were not yet men which we became just over a million years ago. The Indian thought and astrology claims creation of Vedas few million years ago however the estimation of the age of ancient Indian literature by some western researchers like Max Muller, Wintervitz has been estimated 5000 to 1000 years B.C.