Amrit Kumar Bakhshy's status on WhatsApp reads: "To know schizophrenia is n to know psychiatry." But in A 1991, when he received a call from his 18-year-old daughter Richa's boarding school in Dehradun, he knew neither of the two. The school authorities believed Richa was close to a nervous breakdown. She had been in the school infirmary for two nights where she was administered drugs by a psychiatrist. Bakhshy got on a flight immediately. By the time he arrived, his daughter seemed okay, if a little incoherent.
Richa stayed on for a few months to write her exams before returning home to Mumbai. But things soon worsened: she grew reactive and belligerent. One day, Richa began screaming, saying her classmate was harassing her, singing songs and making indecipherable sounds. This was the start of her auditory hallucinations. Later on, she would also begin to see things. The first psychiatrist they consulted misguided them by saying what had happened at school was probably a single, one-off episode. This did not compute with what the Dehradun psychiatrist had suspected—and what was later confirmed by another doctor: schizophrenia. The shocking revelation was the first step on a journey through the dizzying warren of mental health illness.
"Schizophrenia is a very complicated illness. It is a spectrum, the most difficult and worst of all mental disorders," says Bakshy. At the time of Richa's diagnosis, the now 81-year-old admits he knew little about psychological conditions. As a child he had seen people moving aimlessly on the road, some shabbily dressed, others talking, gesticulating to themselves, immersed in visions no one else saw. A similarly affected girl he would often hear screaming was administered electric shocks. He was “scared of such people".
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 2022 من Reader's Digest India.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 2022 من Reader's Digest India.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
From the King's Table to Street Food: A Food History of Delhi
Pushpesh Pant, one of India’s pre-eminent food writers, is back with a comprehensive food history of the capital.
Who Wants Coffee?
It’s bitter—but beloved around the world
Prevent The Pain Of Shingles
You don't have to suffer, as long as you take two important steps
The Best And Worst Diets For Your Heart
Dozens of diets are touted as ‘best’, but it’s easy to lose track of the fact that healthy eating needs to be about overall wellness, not just weight loss.
ME & MY SHELF
Journalist Sopan Joshi has worked in a science and environment framework for nearly three decades. His book Mangifera indica: A Biography of the Mango (Aleph Book Company) synthesizes the sensory appeal of India's favourite fruit with its elaborate cultural roots and natural history. He writes in English and Hindi.
SWITCHED
In 1962, nurses at a small Canadian hospital sent home two women with the wrong babies. Then, 50 years later, their children discovered the shocking mistake.
ECHOES OF THE PAST
A VISIT TO THE ANCIENT BARABAR CAVES IN BIHAR REVEALS A SURPRISING CONNECTION TO A LITERARY CLASSIC
Fathers of the Bride
A young woman finds a unique way to honour the many men who helped her survive her childhood
Fiction's Foresight
British-Bangladeshi author Manzu Islam's works reveal startling parallels to recent political upheavals in Bangladesh, begging the question: Besides helping us make sense of our world, can stories also offer a glimpse into the future?
It Happens ONLY IN INDIA
The Divine Defence Picture this: A tractor in Rajasthan‘s Banswara district,a group of loan agents closing in to seize it and the defaulting farmer and his family standing by.
