Monday 01 February 2010

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Health Report 28 min 1 speaker 6 chapters transcribed 3 days ago

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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What groundbreaking mental‑health research is being conducted in southern India?

Norman Swann 0:00

Hello, it's Norman Swan here with the Health Report. Welcome. In this program, fascinating and confronting research in southern India, which is showing Western countries better and cheaper ways to treat people with serious mental illness. These are trials carried out to a very high standard independently of the pharmaceutical industry, and all for the cost of a few hundred dollars. Plus in the same part of India, in the state of Tamonadu in Valore, A town with lots of poverty. but which has one of the best medical schools in India, the Christian Medical College, a professor of psychiatry who does ward rounds in the street. Her name is Anna Taryan.

Anna Tharian 0:37

After twenty six years of working within the confines of a large teaching department of psychiatry I was invited by a man who had organized a not for profit organization to just as he said do rounds on the street. He says, Doctor, you're going round and round your hospital wards. Would you care to come with me down the street and see how many of your patients sit by the roadside? And this man who hasn't completed a school education opened my eyes to the vast section of the people who need professional psychiatric help who were not existing as far as we were concerned.

Norman Swann 1:20

What did you see when you went on the streets?

Anna Tharian 1:22

We chose a three kilometer distance, going into the heart of the town. So actually we were going from a rural urban transition area to the heart of a large bustling city.

Norman Swann 1:35

To explain the medical school is set in very rural grounds on the outskirts of the town.

Anna Tharian 1:41

Right. So I was a chauffeur and he was directing my driving. We stopped at every person sitting on the wayside who was clearly mentally ill, either talking to themselves or with long matted hair or collecting rubbish or eating from the garbage piles. So we stopped at each of these people and tried to have a conversation with them. And I discovered that although they looked alone and desolate, there were people around them who were bathing them, were shaving them, feeding them, and if they got physically ill, contacting people who could help.

Norman Swann 2:18

So while Stuart thought these were the hopeless homeless, they were the center of social support.

Anna Tharian 2:24

Well, it's probably an exaggeration to say that each of these were cocooned within a network like this, but I found that this person who was sitting in the dust, apparently all alone, the minute I got out of the car and went and spoke to them, The nearby owner of a tea shop would come and say, So what is it you want with this man? As if they were suspicious that we were going to do something harmful to him. And then once they knew where we were coming from and what we wanted, they would tell us the history of this man.

Norman Swann 2:54

Tell me some of the stories you heard.

Anna Tharian 2:56

Oh, let me tell you about probably a fifty year old lady who for the last twenty odd years has been living under a tree in front of a pawnbroker's shop on the side of a four foot dirt road. She has matted hair which forms a huge bundle on the top of her head. She's not smelly, but she obviously hasn't had a bath for a long time. And she has a wooden box in which there are I would guess fifty notebooks in which she has scribbled, illegible, scroll, but neatly every line is covered, and she has been sustained by this pawnbroker whose shop she sits outside. He describes her as a blessing from God.

Norman Swann 3:42

A blessing from God.

Anna Tharian 3:43

She cleans the front yard. She keeps all the dogs out of the place. She shoes away the monkeys. And she is so affectionate towards him and his family that she has now become part of his family. I asked him, you know, why wouldn't you shoe her away? Because sometimes she just gets up and shouts into the air. But he says I think she has been sent by God to complete my family. So when his son got married he actually brought her a new sari, which she m may not have accepted because she's very, very suspicious. But he's part of her family.

Norman Swann 4:19

And despite that, he accepts that she sleeps outside under the tree.

Anna Tharian 4:22

Yes, because she will not accept shelter. I personally asked her and he has asked her many times whether he could hire a place for her to sleep in.