Recovery From Schizophrenia: Psychiatry And Political Economy

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SCHIZOPHRENIA 203(1.3 per 1,000). 29 In a house-to-house survey of rural, semirural and urbaninhabitants of the Agra region of Uttar Pradesh, conducted by K.C.Dube andNarendra Kumar, schizophrenia was shown to be three or four times moreprevalent among the high-caste Brahmins and Vaishes than among the lowestcastes. 30 The field survey of M.N.Elnagar and his coworkers in rural West Bengalrevealed that schizophrenia was more common in the high-caste paras(neighborhoods) of the village. The para occupied by high-caste Singha Roys,where a large proportion of the residents were well educated and worked inbusiness and professional occupations, had the highest prevalence ofschizophrenia. In the para for low-caste Mahisyas, where the proportion of peopleworking in agriculture was highest, no people with schizophrenia could befound. 31The Third World inverted social-class gradient appears to switch to the usualWestern pattern of occurrence as the society becomes industrialized. In studies ofthe Chinese in Taiwan conducted between 1946 and 1948 by psychiatrist Tsung-Yi Lin and his associates the prevalence of schizophrenia was high in the upperclasses and merchants and increasingly prevalent with higher levels of education.By 1961–63, however, after a period of dramatic growth in urbanization,industrialization and education and during a spell of economic prosperity, thepatterns of illness had switched to mirror those of the West. 32 These changes aredetailed in Table 9.2.The high prevalence rates among higher-caste Indians and the wellTable 9.2 Prevalence of schizophrenia per 1,000 of the Taiwanese Chinese population in1946–8 and in 1961–3Source: Lin, R., Rin, H., Yeh, E. et al., “Mental disorders in Taiwan, fifteen years later: Apreliminary report,” in W.Caudill and T.Lin (eds),Mental Health Research in Asia and thePacific, Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1969, pp. 66–91.