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Psychiatry in Pakistan (1947–1994): the balance sheet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

M. Shafique
M. Shafique*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Hayat Shaheed Teaching Hospital, Peshawar, North West Frontier Province, Pakistan
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At the time of independence (1947) Pakistan with a population of 40 million had three asylum-like hospitals with a total of less than 2000 beds. The hospitals were prison-like and they provided custody with little care. Patients were mostly brought in chains. Detention and reception orders were used for admission as provided in law and the law was and continues to be the Lunacy Act of 1912. The common man referred to them as pagal-khanas (mad houses) or jail hospitals. The doctors appointed were mostly general duty doctors with no training and often no interest in psychiatry and their average stay was two to three years. In place of nurses there was a cadre of attendant staff, most of them illiterate, untrained and acting more like police sepoy or jail warder than nurse.

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Briefings
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 19 , Issue 9 , September 1995 , pp. 567 - 570
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1995

References

Bhatti, M. R., Chaudry, M. S. & Hussain, M. F. (1995) 10th International Pyschiatric Conference on Mental Health in Developing Countries. Lahore, Pakistan. December 1994. Psychiatric Bulletin, 19, 445.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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