TREATMENT OF MENTAL ILLNESS IN CEYLON

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30389, 13 March 1964, Page 5

TREATMENT OF MENTAL ILLNESS IN CEYLON

COLOMBO, Ceylon, | Practitioners of "occult” cures for mental disease in Ceylon are providing this country’s western-trained neurologists and psychotherapists with strong competition. The use of western methods of treating mental disease is itself relatively new to Ceylon. For many years, there was only one mental hospital, set up within the framework of the health service originally established by the British administration. This institution, however, was in reality an asylum rather than a hospital. Bleak, overcrowded and odoriferous it housed hapless individuals who had been cast away by society. Once settled within the precincts of this highwailed “home,” they suffered a living death there, awaiting their final release from abnormality. Only the very worst cases, whose relatives were no longer prepared to care for them, were admitted, under compulsion of a Court order. In most instances, these were patients who for years had been left to themselves except during periods of violence, when they were temporarily subdued by prolific use of rauwofia root (now dispensed in the west as reserpine). In more recent years, staffs of the country’s mental hospitals have learned to use modern western techniques of treatment, though they have been divided into two “camps:” the fanatics in the use of such techniques as shock therapy; and exponents of the tranquilliser technique on the other.

Neuro-surgery is still almost unknown in Ceylon, apparatus like the electro-encephelo-graph being held in awe by the lay public. Those who

practice “occult” cures, of course, scoff at all western treatments, having their own views on mental disease and using their own cures. With schizophrenia, for instance, occultists scorn the idea of “split” personality. “The simple fact,” one of them told me, “is what is diagnosed as schizophrenia is actually the existence of two spirits within the same human frame—one which is legitimately there and another which is taken forcible residence either through ‘greed’ or through compulsion of a superior controlling evil spirit. To cure the patient, this second spirit must be driven out. “AU other forms of mental disease are caused by malevolent influence brought to bear upon the individual through the operation of occult charms.” The diagnostic machinery of most occultists is simple: a saucer with a lit candle affixed to it. The occultist, known as a light reader in this case, peers into the saucer and reading from it first describes the symptoms of the patient concerned and then proceeds to unfold the causes of the “disease.” One of the best-known of these light-readers is a middle aged, cross-eyed widow of frightening appearance, named Maggi Akka (Sister Maggie). She has her consulting room in the hamlet of Mirihana, some 10 miles out of Colombo. Her clients include businessmen, flourishing professionals and politicians. A typical case history runs thus: a married woman in her late twenties was suffering from acute mental disturbances, including hallucinations, voices and the like. “A typical case of schizophrenia and paranoic delusions,” declared the western doctor. “Utter nonsense,” commented Maggi Akka. When a brother of the patient called on Maggi Akka, she lit her candle and peered moodily into the saucer. With almost incredible accuracy, she described the patient, where she was. and what she was doing. Then, on request, she viewed each of the places where the patient had lived.

At one point, she began to describe the home of the patient’s parents, and having “seen” in her saucer the site of the well from which water used to be drawn, said that ten paces away from the well there was buried an evil charm which had mobilised the services of an evil spirit to enter the woman’s body and wreck havoc there. When she was later taken to the place which she had described, Maggie Akka walked unerringly to the spot and asked that it be dug up. spadeful by spadeful. As each spadeful of the muddy soil was emptied, it was searched until in one was found some pieces of human bone wrapped in what appeared to be locks of the patient’s hair.

After several incantations, Maggie Akka threw the charm into a nearby river. The patient’s husband, parents and close relatives insist that the systems immediately ceased and have not since reappeared.

Arms Factory.—A new ordnance factory to manufacture small arms and amunition will go into production by the end of the year, the Indian Defence Minister (Mr Chavan' said today-—New Delhi, March 11.