Volume-XI, Issue-VI, November 2025 |
Breaking Barriers, Building Hope: Dr. M. Sarada Menon and the Humanization of Psychiatry in India Debasmita Ruj, Research Scholar, Department of History, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India |
Received: 19.11.2025 | Accepted: 27.11.2025 | Published Online: 30.11.2025 | Page No: 125-134 | ||||
DOI: 10.29032/ijhsss.vol.11.issue.06W.165 | |||||||
ABSTRACT | ||
The first woman psychiatrist was Dr. M. Sarada Menon, who significantly transformed the way mental health care was approached in India. She was a pioneer who dedicated over sixty years of her life to new avenues of treating mental health, bettering hospitals, reaching out to the communities, and acting in favour of better laws. When she received MBBS and MD in general medicine, she then trained in psychiatry at the All-India Institute of Mental Health (NIMHANS). She transformed the way psychiatric care was provided and shifted the focus of giving people a place in asylum to providing a complete system that emphasized on rehabilitation, respect and patient rights. She implemented outpatient clinics, special units and economic therapy centre. In 1984, she assisted in the foundation of the Schizophrenia Research Foundation (SCARF), which was accredited by WHO as a mental health research and education centre. SCARF adopted a broad strategy, which involved medical assistance, community psychiatry, anti-stigma campaigns that influenced mental health care in the world. She was also significant in policy alteration, served in humanitarian and international roles, encouraged gentle care and re-establishing mentally ill individuals into society. She won the Padma Bhushan and numerous other awards and she is known as the mother of Psychiatric Rehabilitation in India. In this paper, the author examines her life, work and enduring legacy and how her thoughts helped psychiatry become more human, mental health services more extensive in communities, and future generations of professionals encouraged to deliver caring and inclusive services. | ||
Keywords: First female psychiatrist in India, Psychiatric rehabilitation, Women in medicine, Community psychiatry, SCARF, Patient dignity and rights, Anti-stigma initiatives. |