rLung, Mind, and Mental Health: The Notion of “Wind” in Tibetan Conceptions of Mind and Mental Illness

This article presents an analysis of the way in which rlung (“wind, breath”) functions as a mode of explanation for what Western medicine regards as “psychiatric” illness, based on field research on the topic of mental health, illness, and healing conducted within a Tibetan population in Darjeeling, northeast India. The article explores this notion of rlung and its relationship to body and mind, in order to examine its role in the causation and treatment of various forms of “mental illness”, before analysing some similarities and differences between rlung-related categories and biomedical classifications of mental illness.