Are Family Systems and Medical Systems Broken? An Auto-Ethnographic Reflection on Psychiatric Incarceration in India

Abstract

I examine whether undue power and privilege allow families in India to use force to incarcerate their wives, daughters or other family members who may deviate from the “norm”. Using my own personal experience, I examine the intersectionality of gender, violence and privilege to see how several systems are broken. I also argue psychiatry and the patriarchy are tools of oppression and how India and most other societies continue to perpetuate trauma in those they are trying to help. In addition, families become “allies” to psychiatry and medical systems unwittingly and become “keepers” of their broken people. By citing other writing and memoirs, I will show how stories like these have been happening since before Victorian times to the present.