Paper short abstract:

Possession and sorcery are officially excluded from reinvented ayurvedic psychiatry while in practice doctors often bridge the gap between mental disorder and vernacular framings of mental illness as possession or sorcery. This paper traces the double engagement of ayurvedic psychiatry with biopsychiatric and vernacular explanatory models.

Paper long abstract:

The positioning of institutionalized and academically taught ayurvedic psychiatry in Kerala between hegemonic biopsychiatry and ritual practices of treating mental illness is a process of constant negotiation. Ayurvedic psychiatry engages the hegemonic biopsychiatric discourse on mental disorders: Globally circulating disease entities like depression are translated into ayurvedic concepts whereby biopsychiatry's power of definition is maintained as well as contested. Ayurvedic research work aims to prove the effectiveness of ayurvedic procedures and herbs and to develop Ayurveda into an evidence-based medicine based on placebo-controlled clinical trials. All "non-scientific" etiologies and treatment practices related to spirit affliction and sorcery which have long been part of bhut vidya, a branch of ayurveda now translated as psychiatry, are marginalized or reinterpreted along biopsychiatric and psychological ideas. But sorcery and possession persist to play a role in many patients' explanatory models and their interpretation of the ayurvedic practices like induced vomiting or fumigation as well as for some traditional families and singular practitioners who combine ayurvedic and ritual healing. So despite all efforts to present ayurvedic psychiatry in a scientific garb, in practice ayurvedic psychiatrists often navigate between scientific and vernacular understandings of mental illness and of the effectiveness of therapeutic measures.

Drawing on fieldwork in two ayurvedic psychiatric institutions in the town of Kottakkal and one private clinic in Ankamally from 2009 to 2010, this paper traces how ayurvedic psychiatrists engage in the scientification of ayurvedic psychiatry, while in practice they often try to bridge the gap between mental disorder and vernacular framings of mental illness as possession or sorcery.