Mental hygiene and global psychiatry in India
From the 1930s, Indian mental hygiene mixed British models, Berkeley-Hill organising, and nationalist/eugenic family politics.
Source
The mental hygiene movement: the birth of global mental health in India
Study at a glance
- Design
- Qualitative / archival — Micro-history of Indian Association for Mental Hygiene via its Quarterly Bulletin, 1930–38
- N
- Bulletin-based organisational history; not a sample N
- Population
- Indian mental-hygiene organisers and debates under colonial rule (esp. Berkeley-Hill)
- Outcome
- Homegrown colonial–nationalist amalgam of mental hygiene with eugenic family politics
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
Inspect source passages
Mental hygiene and global psychiatry in India
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
The core source is the Association Bulletin between 1930 and 1938.
This paper is largely based on an analysis of articles published in the Quarterly Bulletin of the Indian Association for Mental Hygiene between the 1930 and 1938
Gap?
There exists little to no discussion on how mental hygiene developed in the colonies. This study is the first to shed light on the lesser-known chapter of
What they did
The paper micro-historically reads the Quarterly Bulletin of the Indian Association for Mental Hygiene (1930–38) and related debates.
What they found
The movement replicated an English model but was homegrown, an amalgam of colonial and nationalist aspirations. The colonial state would not fund a full programme. Positive eugenics linked race improvement to motherhood and childhood.
The limits
What it doesn't show
This is a movement-and-journal history, not an evaluation of later WHO mental-health programmes in India.
Key terms
- Mental hygiene
- Interwar movement treating mental health as public guidance of emotions, habits, family, and sex.
- Owen Berkeley-Hill
- British psychiatrist in India who organised and drove the Indian mental-hygiene movement.
- Positive eugenics
- Improvement-of-race thinking that shaped family, motherhood, and disability talk in the movement.
- Quarterly Bulletin
- 1930–38 organ of the Indian Association for Mental Hygiene, the paper’s core archive.
Flashcards
0 of 12 answers reviewed
Research intelligence for this paper
See its role on concept claims, tensions it is part of, placement history, and related discoveries.
Quiz yourself
Indian mental hygiene mainly?
Common questions
Copy of Britain?
In design, yes; impetus was substantially homegrown.
Who organised it?
Owen Alexander Berkeley-Hill, above all.
State support?
The colonial state was not keen to build the programme.
More on Psychiatry