What can we learn from the story “Lamp And Clinic In The Same Week”?
From the book – Chapter 1: What Is Mental Health?
Lamp And Clinic In The Same Week
Leela’s mother believed that if the Tuesday fast was kept and Hanuman Chalisa recited, the daughter’s voices would leave. The voices stayed. Sleep left. An aunt said the sentence that saved the week: “We will do the Calisa in the auto on the way to the hospital. God is not waiting outside the gate.” The psychiatrist did not mock the fast. He said keep whatever gives her courage, add medicine, review in three days. Leela’s recovery was not a miracle that cancelled science, and not a science that cancelled the lamp. It was a house that refused the false choice.
Read the full chapter – Chapter 1: What Is Mental Health?
Stories from real life
- The Quiet Room at Number Twelve – Meera was sixteen and, until about two months ago, the loudest person in her house. She sang while doing homework, argued about cricket with her brother…
- What Will People Say? – Rohan, thirty-four, was a sales manager in Pune who had not slept properly for months. He woke at four every morning with a racing heart, snapped…
- Missing Her, Slowly Healing – Mrs Annamma Joseph was seventy and had lost her husband of forty-five years in March. By June she was still crying most evenings, and sometimes she…
- The Headaches That Had No Field – Ramesh, forty-eight, farmed three acres in a village in Vidarbha. After two failed monsoons and a loan he could not repay, he began to complain of…
Shloks
- Bhagavad Gita 2.38 – Holding pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat as equal, prepare for the work in front of you; thus, you will not incur wrong.
- Sushruta Samhita, Sutra Sthana 15.41 – One whose fundamental energies (doshas) and digestive fire are balanced, whose tissues and eliminations work well, and whose self, senses and mind are clear and content,…
More on this topic: What is mental health? A simple guide to the mind and who can help
More questions
- What can we learn from the story “A Child Who Would Not Go To School”?
- Understanding simple meaning of mental health
- A second definition – simple meaning of mental health
- Key points – simple meaning of mental health
- A tighter clinical definition – simple meaning of mental health
- What is the difference between mental health and mental disorder?
- Diagnosis is a map, not a mirror – mental health versus mental disorder
- Why mental health matters?
- The body keeps the same books – why mental health matters
- Common myths about mental health
- Psychologist, psychiatrist or counsellor – what is the difference?
- Early warning signs of mental distress