Cultural construction of health and healing

The cultural construction of health and healing in India reflects a blend o f traditional thoughts of psycho-spiritual and super-natural nature on one hand and the modern knowledge of health care, medicines, mental health, psy chiatry, and psychotherapy on the other. The techniques of healing range fr om the psychoanalysis, through psychiatric treatments and the use of allopa thic medicines to faith healing. With the modern allopathic medicines being easily available, psychosomatic interventions have become very popular. Ho wever, there still exists a large number of the practitioners of traditiona l Indian medicines (ayurveda) and faith healers who use yoga, meditation, a nd a variety of tantrum ways of healing. The paper first describes the traditional approaches to health and healing, their continuity to the present days, then shows how the western methods o f treatment entered into the Indian medical scene, and finally reports a st udy which seems to he quite relevant in the context of Dynamic Psychiatry.