From the theme session @ANCIPS2013 –Psycosocial Adversity and Mental health. The speakers were
1.P Sainath who is a journalist and rural affairs editor at The Hindu and visiting professor at University of California.One of the few Indians to win the the Ramon Magsaysay award in the category of journalism and literature. Sainath speaks mainly on agrarian distress, financial inequity and misguided fiscal policies (man-made “policy driven disaster”) as root cause of farmer suicide (“collapse of the farmer’s universe”).
2. R Srinivasamurthy who is retired Professor of Psychiatry (NIMHANS) talks about mental health impact of disasters by tracing through the Bhopal tragedy, Maratwada earthquake, Orissa tragedy, Gujarat earthquake, riots and Tsunami. RSM draws on literature which correlates economic inequity and mental distress/illness and says a public health approach via community and family based psychosocial interventions (facilitating community support) for distress responses/behaviors/illness is effective and can mitigate suffering from disaster.”..the implication is that we really have to think of mental health of the population rather than the patients who come to us -in terms of prevention, in terms of preparedness”. Interventions at national level to reduce economic inequality and interventions at international level to maintain peace.
Added on 24.09.2020 :
Sainath during film festival in tvpm talks about farmer suicide data in NCRB. And my tweet at that time
An excerpt from that talk: full PDF
“There are two ways to go about this – one, finding out what are the causes or drivers of depression, and two, medicalise the depression. Fortunately, the Indian Association of Clinical Psychiatry and the Indian Association of Psychology have both opted for the first one – finding out what causes depression.”
Those who make the depression argument do not seem to realise that that is the cause of every suicide, no one makes a ‘happy’ suicide. Neither do they wonder why depression appears to affect only the farmers in such a large number, more than any other profession. A journalist had suggested alcoholism to be the reason driving farmer suicides, Sainath recalls. If that were the case, there would be no journalists left, he had answered then.
28.03.2021 : drivers of depression – phrase that beautifully conceptualizes the psychosocial angle as used by Sainath when referring to farmer suicides, again used by Vikram Patel when referring to suicide in adolescents. (thenewindianexpress 28.03.2021)
Community Psychiatry in India 