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Buddhist-derived “mindfulness” practices are currently enjoying popularity amongst both the lay population and health professionals in the West, especially in the treatment of psychiatric conditions such as depression. This popularity leads to questions regarding how people in diverse Buddhist communities might conceptualise psychiatric illness and healing. This paper explores perspectives on psychiatric illness within a Tibetan Buddhist community in North India, focusing on the role of “emotions” in causation and treatment which was frequently discussed by informants. Comparisons between biomedical perspectives on emotional “disturbance” as a symptom of psychiatric illness and Tibetan conceptions of emotions as causal or contributory factors in a number of psychiatric illnesses are discussed. Three case studies are described to illustrate some of these common perspectives, examine how they are reflected in health-seeking behavior, and consider comparisons between the two systems.
This article presents an analysis of the way in which rlung ("wind, breath") functions as a mode of explanation for what Western medicine regards as "psychiatric" illness, based on field research on the topic of mental health, illness, and healing conducted within a Tibetan population in Darjeeling, northeast India. The article explores this notion of rlung and its relationship to body and mind, in order to examine its role in the causation and treatment of various forms of "mental illness", before analysing some similarities and differences between rlung-related categories and biomedical classifications of mental illness.
This article presents an analysis of the way in which <i>rlung</i> (“wind, breath”) functions as a mode of explanation for what Western medicine regards as “psychiatric” illness, based on field research on the topic of mental health, illness, and healing conducted within a Tibetan population in Darjeeling, northeast India. The article explores this notion of <i>rlung</i> and its relationship to body and mind, in order to examine its role in the causation and treatment of various forms of “mental illness”, before analysing some similarities and differences between <i>rlung</i>-related categories and biomedical classifications of mental illness.
This thesis examines Tibetan perspectives on the causation, management and treatment of mental illness (Tib.: sems nad) within a Tibetan exile community in Darjeeling, northeast India. Based on two six-month periods of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2011 and 2012, it examines common cultural understandings of mental illness and healing, and how these are reflected in health-seeking behaviour. To date, research on lay Tibetan perspectives of mental illness and their impact on health-seeking behaviour has been limited, especially in relation to the concept of smyo nad (‘madness’). Following on from work by Jacobson (2000, 2002, 2007) and Millard (2007), the thesis investigates lay Tibetan perceptions of the causation and treatment of various kinds of mental disorders through the use of indepth semi-structured interviews and participant observation, comparing and contrasting Tibetan approaches to those of biomedical psychology and psychiatry and their accompanying classification systems, the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and European International Classification of Disease (ICD). Four case studies of individuals labelled with different Tibetan and biomedical diagnoses related to mental health conditions are described in order to illustrate a number of key concepts in Tibetan approaches to mental illness and its healing. The research found that that a number of informants successfully combined different – sometimes opposing – explanatory frameworks and treatment approaches in response to an episode of mental illness. However, the thesis concludes that the Tibetan and biomedical categories remain difficult to correlate, due in part to their culturally-specific nature, based on significantly different underlying assumptions regarding individuals and their relationship to the environment.
This book presents research based on two six-month periods of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Darjeeling during 2011 and 2012. It utilizes four case studies to illustrate lay perceptions of different mental health conditions and their causes and treatments, juxtaposed with Tibetan textual and biomedical explanations. These expanations combine with background interviews of lay Tibetans, as well as monastic practitioners, Tibetan amchi, and biomedical doctors, to help draw out the complexities of the situation for individuals affected by different experiences of mental illness.