India Syndrome

Here's a fascinating article about a syndrome found in foreigners who visit India with high expectations of spiritual fulfilment, and go a little off the rails, with disorientation and even psychosis happening to them as a result. 

It describes the research of a French doctor named Régis Airault, and an Indian psychiatrist named Sunil Mittal.

Régis Airault worked at the French Consulat in Mumbai, and saw this over and over again. He differentiates it from simple culture shock, and says it is also found in other places of great psychological significance to people, such as Jerusalem, or Florence, where people can be overcome by the religious or artistic significance of the place.

Sunil Mittal is the senior psychiatrist at the Cosmos Institute of Mental Health and Behavioural Sciences in New Delhi. He also sees the syndrome regularly, and he breaks it down into two categories: simple tourists who arrive with a pre-existing problem or vulnerability and have a breakdown, and people who arrive hoping for a deeply significant spiritual journey. In either case, he says the best treatment is a ticket home.