India makes you crazy...

Sama

...or are we crazy to go to India?

"Psychologists are starting to take note of a curious mental condition afflicting foreigners in India, says Marianne Alazard

Don’t you dare touch me! Don’t come near or I’ll open my third eye and kill you!” The 22-year-old Swiss man’s non-stop screaming doesn’t distract the team of doctors and nurses treating him at the Privat Hospital in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of Delhi. Dr Kalyan S. Sachdev, who runs the hospital, deals with around 100 such cases a year. The patients, usually Westerners in their mid-20s and 30s, come in with the same afflictions: paranoia, schizophrenia or acute delirium.

Each year, European embassies typically repatriate 10 to 20 nationals suffering from psychological disorders. The numbers are hardly significant, given that around four million tourists visit India annually. How-ever, the phenomenon is extreme enough for psychiatrists to pay it attention...."



Doctor, I got the Indian Syndrome



funny how the article only mentions Europeans going nuts....
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ok, I'm kidding, chill out......

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My India, 2005-2008
BE THE REVOLUTION

Brisso

... Based on several visits to Goa and other young backpacker hotspots (including visiting a local hospital with some very confused young people), usually drug related ...

PeakXV

PaharGanj

Seriously - from my observation the unstable do not hail from any single country or continent. Many people are going there and looking for things/answers/happiness that they cannot seem to find or put their finger on in their home countries. They may think that India will solve all their problems and it will all 'come together' for them there. And it may!

But many of these travellers already suffer from manic depression or other mental disorders, drug and/or alchohol problems and these illnesses can/are subject to relapses from random triggers that can lurk and present themselves suddenly and at inopportune times in many areas throughout India.

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We shall not cease from exploration and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started ...and know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot

Don't go to India ~ Pre-trip Warnings & Misconceptions?

SitaParityaga

What an article!

One of the reasons I go to India is to experience some of that "phenomena"...OK, not the deep end style!

Truly though, it's a symptom of many serious mental illnesses to "hit the road" for a variety of reasons, often ending up stranded, becoming more stressed, not getting any treatment for their illness, eventually impairing their ability to take care of themselves at all. Like that poor guy found dead in the cave: no one was there to clue him in that he wasn't quite "advanced" enough to go without food and water and survive.

I live in a very touristy area of the US, and routinely hear of international visitors in need of emergency psychiatric treatment, and their consulates coming to help them get home. No particular group of visitors more than any other....anyone, anywhere in the world can totally lose it on the road.

I wonder if there are any psychiatric or medical people on IM from India who would care to comment from a first hand perspective, what is the best way to get help for people who have serious psychiatric symptoms while they are traveling in India?

wonderwomanusa

When I checked into a hotel in Pushkar in 1989, the deskman asked me to help with an American woman who had flipped out. He said that they were thinking of sending her to Ajmer for shock treatments.

We took care of her for a day or two -- mostly getting her to take water and a little curd, and making sure she didn't hurt herself. One morning she got up, jumped in the lake (!) and swam across to the other side -- wearing only a T-shirt and knickers. A couple of sadhus wrapped a blanket around her and walked her back to the hotel. By then, she was on the mend, though she didn't believe the stories we told her of what she'd been doing ... until a few other people (including the hotel manager) told her the same stories.

It turned out that someone had offered her a "special lassi" and she hadn't realized that it was "special" because of the bhang! Eating bhang, instead of smoking it, makes it very psychedelic and she'd been "off on a trip" without knowing it.

If I hadn't been there, she'd have been electro-shocked and sent back to the US, and would probably be a zombie now.

Nick-H

Very interesting article, from a very good news source.

It is analogous to the cult thing: cults are often accused of damaging the mental health of their members, but which came first, the cult, or the mental health problem?

There is such a fine line between religion and madness too.I knew someone who had a close relationship with Shiva. For want of professional diagnostic ability, let me just describe her condition as more than a bit 'strange'. She told me that her psychiatrist was prepared to section (forcibly restrict to a mental health hospital) her if she planned to visit India. Heck, maybe her 'religious' experience was absolutely genuine!

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Just one member of the IndiaMike Mod Team

Sama

the first time I was in India an American student at the yoga school freaked out. I don't know exactly what happened but we all kind of figured he had mental problems already. I found him one morning in my hotel lobby -- when I asked him what he was doing there he said that his guesthouse was too noisy and he came to my hotel to get a room and try to get a good night's sleep. He said he was never able to sleep in Chennai because it was too noisy. I remember he kept saying how loud and noisy Chennai was 24/7 -- maybe that sent him over the edge. I remember he always seemed a bit freaked out about India all the time.

All I know is that when the administrators took him to the airport, no airline would let him board because he was acting so strange. They ended up taking him to the US Embassy so they could send him home.

brishti

really? i thought it was just in the movies seriously.
and yes, this is true of folks from anywhere - at the end of the day we all belong to the human spieces - like it or not.

great article yogagal . thank you.


:brishti

Aishah

Excellent article YogaGal - and Peak, Nick, and Sita sum up much of what I would be answering. Can happen to anyone, anywhere at any time. WWUSA - yes, and also spiking of drinks which may not necessarily be in India can cause this too - perfectly normal people can be 'out of it' for a couple of days, not knowing what they are doing until the effect wears off. Very dangerous situations. Bhang lassis - I've heard of some awful stories of reactions from these. Best avoided in my opinion.
India is not going to be the answer for people with deepseated problems back in their own country - wherever you are you take your problems with you until you can work them out, manage them with or without medication. And 'full on' India may just exacerbate the intensity of them as typified by that article.
Some interesting side bits - Japanese in France? I never knew that one. Also the 'condition' now has a name - Indian Syndrome!
Whilst they say drugs are not usually a catalyst for this, I think in some cases they may be.

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"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards."

brishti

SERIOUSLY????

gosh! theres one more on the list for what-india-means-to-me-rangers

i wonder if its relevant for indians in india too



:brishti

the opoponax

I once had the American equivalent of a "special lassi", without entirely putting 2 and 2 together about what it was - memorable experience, to say the least.

And, yeah, had I not found the friend who handed me the drink and confirmed what was going on, I'd have thought I was cracking up, too.

I also have to say that I'm convinced that at least half of the backpackers' tropes about India Being So Intense (or fill in the blank with your word of choice) is because, yeah, hon, anything's gonna be intense when you're doped up all the time. I thought my living room couch was intense when I took mushrooms...

pquekel

To me this phenomenon sounds a lot like the (ill)famous syndrome the Stendhal... a state of mind that can be induced by to much beauty experienced in a very short time...a state of euphoria...not sure if Stendhal had it or described it first. I felt a bit in that state at the beginning of my first visit to Firenze in Italy, standing at the gate of the San Miniato and shortly after that looking out over the river Arno and the city itself...in that case it was elating and not discomforting...Later the same feelings overwhelmed me in the shadow of the maha kovil of Thanjavur...we people can take only so much beauty (or stress because of cultural shocks in general) and for some it means mental disorder. Paul Bowles touches this subject impressively in his The Sheltering Sky.

Nick-H

Oh sure: some of them acquire millions of followers and become very rich.

Others, sadly the vast majority, form the most sad section of the beggars to be found on the streets of a country where mental health care for the poor isn't even on the list of things to be done.

brishti

you KNOW i'm not talking about 'that' when i mention 'india syndrome'???


:brishti

Vasko

pquekel, the "symptoms" of the Stendhal syndrome were described by the French writer Stendhal upon his visit to Florence (just like you!) in the 1800's. It was only in the 1970's that an Italian psychiatrist coined the term Stendhal syndrome based on her own clinical experience of tourists in Florence.

But now, a Paharganj Syndrome? Well, why not...

But as many of you have noted, people with a vulnerability to display psychotic or other less serious symptoms often react to stressful conditions. This is in line with the commonly accepted stress-vulnerability -model of mental illness. So it doesn't really matter where you take your vulnerability on this planet, in certain stressful conditions you are more likely to break down (if you are inclined to do so).

And India can definitely produce a barrage of, let's say, challenging situations!

Oh, and the last paragraph of the article is amusing yet so true:

"In hindsight, many tend to see the experience as rewarding. Their families, who often have to spend substantial sums at short notice to pay for their relative’s repatriation feel relieved, but also wary, because once home safely, the adventurer now has an idea lingering at the back of his mind — to set off to exotic India once again."