Today has been designated the World Mental Health Day. It provides us an opportunity to seriously introspect on the plight of those afflicted with mental illnesses all over the world and specially so in India. The epidemiological surveys have convincingly indicated that schizophrenia is more or less uniformly distributed across the globe;nearly one per cent of the total population. India is not different.
If anything of all the pockets identified where the incidence is slightly higher i.e. 2 to 3 percent , one of them happens to be the Southern tip of India (along with a region of Croatia and West of Ireland). Yet many of us including some medical colleagues continue to entertain the totally unjustified view that India is relatively insulated from this menace. This view along with general disdain for the mentally ill plus the social stigma that still persist has prevented us from…
