Institute of Behavioural Science (IBS) of Gujarat Forensic Sciences University is mulling to start a counselling centre with trained clinical psychologists to help patients coming to Mira Datar Dargah.
The dargah, a first-of-its-kind initiative, also offers psychiatric help to patients who come to get themselves treated for mental illness. These patients see mental illness as ‘possessed by the devil’. Altruist, a non government organisation (NGO) with support of the state government, has been running an out patient department (OPD) inside the dargah.
The need for such a support system was felt after two PhD students of IBS, under guidance of their director and professors, presented a paper on fading boundaries between dava (medicine) and duva (prayer) at a conference in Pune. “We are mulling possibility of providing trained psychologists there, but nothing has been finalised yet,” said Dr SL Vaya, director of IBS.
The doctoral students, as part of their paper, also spent some time at the dargah where they observed effects of the rituals as well as medicines on the patients and how it benefitted them, depending on their belief.
“We found that relapse was a major problem with patients coming to the dargah. When we spoke to psychiatrists, we found that it was because no work was being done at the grassroot level. Lack of counselling to patients to help them understand their condition coupled with limitations of working in a dargah also aggravated the matter,” said Soumya Bhatt, doctoral scholar at IBS.
“As someone associated with dava duva project for a long time, I found it to be a wonderful amalgamation of faith and medicine. We also found that this can be a better model to introduce trained clinical psychologists in such set-ups to offer professional help to patients even as they seek help of faith-healers,” said professor RH Bakre.
The others who worked on the paper include doctoral scholar Manali Ranadive, Namrata Khopkar, scientific assistant forensic psychology division and Varun Goyal, a student.
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