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Background:Psychiatric services in India are limited. As a result, a variety of people including faith healers, unqualifiedmedical professionals etc, form first line of contact for patients with mental illness. Also, faith in the medicalmodel of psychiatric illness may be shattered during course of treatment owing to chronicity of illness.Aim:This study was planned to understand the factors which lead the patients to faith healers and to assess thepercentage of patients switching over to faith healers from medical professionals.Methods:A hospital based study was conducted at Institute of Mental Health, Hyderabad on patients visiting outpatientdepartment using a semi structured questionnaire. The data was analysed using Microsoft excel version. Onlythe prevalence was estimated.Results:Among 98 people who were included in the study, males predominated. The socio demographic factors whichhad impact on patients approaching faith healer were; age less than 35 years, literacy, and family income.Urban or rural background did not have much impact on patients contacting faith healers. Patients consultingnon psychiatric medical professionals have higher switch compared to those consulting psychiatrists.Conclusion:There is a need to increase awareness regarding psychiatry among non-psychiatrists, with an effective referral system in place. Awareness programmes also should be targeted to general population.
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Background Criminal behavior is said to have an association with some psychiatric illnesses, esp. Schizophrenia.There is a modest significant relationship between schizophrenia and violence & crime which persists even aftercontrolling demographic and socio-economic variables.Aims To find out what diagnostic categories of psychiatric illnesses are prevalent in the patients admitted to prisonward of Institute of Mental Health, Hyderabad.Methods Retrospective analysis of records of prison ward patients was done.Results One in five of the patients admitted to prison ward had Schizophrenia mostly of paranoid type. Majority ofpatients were readmissions, because of poor compliance.Conclusions There is a dire need to strengthen prison mental health services.
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The advances in the area of Information Technology has a pervasive influence on the society. There is no field whereIT cannot help in improving its quality. IT has improved the processing speed of information, ease with which informationcan be transferred and shared. It is bringing more transparency in services and made the life more comfortable. Thruthis paper I am putting my humble efforts to share with mental health professionals how Information Technology(IT)and Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) can help us and our clients to improve the quality, reliability,convenience, comfort, cost effectiveness and development of services. I have discussed various areas within the fieldof mental health to which IT and ITES can contribute. This article is also intended to stimulate all our colleagues tostart using and using more of IT and ITES in psychiatric practice. Tele-medicine and Tele-psychiatry are usedinterchangeably in this article as we are also physicians and will be interacting with other medical colleagues' whiledelivering the services.