Modern psychiatry in India: the British role in establishing an Asian system, 1858-1947.

Four broad phases can be traced in the development of modern psychiatry in India. After briefly considering the outline of each of these phases this article will focus its attention on the second and third. It will be argued through tracing the trends in patient admission, treatment regimes and the organisation of the asylum system in these years that the foundations of modern psychiatry were laid in India in the period 1858 to 1947 and that the modern psychiatric system in India as it is today, although it has evolved since Independence in 1947, continues in significant ways to be shaped by the colonial period.