MENTAL HOSPITALS IN INDIA

This review traces the history of the mental hospital movement, initially on the world stage, and later in India, in relation to advances in psychiatric care. Mental hospitals have played a significant role in the evolution of psychiatry to its present status The earliest hospital in India were established during the British colonial rule. They served as a means to isolate mentally ill persons from the societal mainstream and provide treatments that were in vogue at the time. Following India's independence, there has been a trend towards establishing general hospital psychiatry units and deinstitutionalization, while at the same time improving conditions in the existing mental hospitals. Since 1947, a series of workshops of superintendents was conducted to review the prevailing situations in mental hospitals and to propose recommendations to improve the same. Implementation of the Mental Health Act, 1987, and grovernmental focus upon mental hospital reform have paved way for a more specific and futuristic role for mental hospitals in planning psychiatric services for the new millenium, especially for severe mental illnesses.