Temple treatment for psychiatric illness

A six-week stay at a Hindu temple in Tamil Nadu can produce the same improvement in people with severe psychiatric disorders as a month-long course of standard drugs, say researchers in India.

A team led by Ramanathan Raguram of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore studied all 31 people who came for help and stayed at the Muthuswamy temple in Velayuthampalayampudur between June and August 2000.

The patients were evaluated by a trained psychiatrist. Six were diagnosed with delusional disorders, 23 with paranoid schizophrenia and two with bipolar disorder. At the end of their stays, their scores on test called the brief psychiatric rating scale had improved by an average of nearly 20 per cent.

No specific rituals or ceremonies intended to improve mental health were performed in the temple. The patients attended a simple morning prayer for 15 minutes, and then spent the rest of the day helping out with routine temple work.

“What they were given is tender loving care, in a non-threatening environment, in tune with their own cultural beliefs, with the hope of recovery,” says Raguram. “And in the history of psychiatry, these were the principles on which asylums were originally built.”

Curative powers

In India, many mentally ill people of all faiths visit religious sites renowned for having curative powers. The Muthuswamy temple is built over the tomb of a man who lived a century ago and who, according to legend, could cure mental illnesses with a touch of his hand. His descendants now run the temple and offer its services for free.

The 31 patients had been suffering for an average of 71 weeks. Only one had received any professional care.

The dramatic improvement in test scores matches those expected within four weeks of administering drugs such as chlorpromazine and risperidone, says Raguram. “We were not really prepared for it,” he says.

Complementary approach

Assen Jablensky, an expert on mental disorders at the University of Western Australia, Perth, points out that such findings are not specific to India, or any particular faith. “For example, a ‘treatment protocol’ in many ways similar to the healing temple of Muthuswamy has been practised at the traditional therapeutic village of Aro in Nigeria,” he says.

But he cautions that such treatments should be considered as complementary to other approaches, and not an alternative.

Raguram admits one problem with the study – there were no controls. “To prove the efficacy we need double-blind control studies, which is very difficult to conduct in such settings,” he says.

Journal reference: British Medical Journal (vol 325, p38)