Ravi Singareddy, a faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to spend four months studying psychiatric care and sleep medicine in India. He will teach at a multi-specialty hospital in Hyderabad in southern India, focusing on sleep disorders and how they relate to mood and anxiety disorders.
Singareddy, who grew up in India and still has family members there, said psychiatric care in parts of his native country is quite different from that provided in the United States. For example, he said many people who live in remote parts of India turn to “spiritual healers" for help with psychiatric disorders. The treatments they receive often range from unconventional to downright harmful. Some ‘healers’ beat patients with neem tree sticks or have them eat burning coal. Singareddy plans to study these rural practices as well as facilities in urban settings such as Hyderabad, where more conventional psychiatric care is found.
The stigma that is attached to mental illness also will be part of Singareddy’s studies. “People tend to believe that expressing emotional problems is a sign of weakness,” he said. “It appears to be more common in India than in the U.S.” He plans to assess the beliefs and attitudes related to emotional disorders in rural south India.
Singareddy arrived in India late last month and plans to return to the United States in April. He hopes the trip will lead to collaborations between psychiatric caregivers in India and their U.S. counterparts.
Singareddy is the second faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry to be named a Fulbright Scholar. The first was John Ellis, professor of psychiatry and pharmacology, who was awarded a grant in 2007 to conduct research into muscarinic neuroreceptors.
The Fulbright Scholar program, a prestigious international educational exchange program, is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs within the U.S. Department of State.