Ayurvedic Psychiatry and the Moral Physiology of Depression in Kerala

Abstract

The GMH movement has not considered psychiatric traditions outside mainstream psychiatry. By highlighting the existence and significance of Ayurvedic mental health care, I challenge the notion of a “treatment gap” in India. At the same time, focusing on Ayurvedic psychiatry as an alternative to globalised biomedical psychiatry and highly dynamic field, I go beyond the usual dichotomy of global psychiatry and local traditional healing by showing how a (re)invented tradition assembles local bio-moral embodied minds, classic texts, vernacular practices, and globalised psychiatric and psychological knowledge to recognise and treat distressed, embodied minds. Against the narrative of traditional medicine as the epistemic “other” to Western psychiatry, I will describe how Ayurvedic psychiatrists engage elements of globalised psychiatry and psychology while stressing Ayurveda’s epistemic difference and embodied alterities.