Ajita Chakraborty (1926 - 2015) was one of the first women psychiatrists in India.

Early life and education

Chakraborty was born in Calcutta in the state of Bengal in 1926.[1] She graduated from Scottish Church College in Calcutta in 1944,[2] and in 1950 Chakraborty qualified as a doctor by graduating from Calcutta Medical College. She continued her medical education in the United Kingdom where she trained in psychiatry. In 1960 she went back to India, thereby becoming the first female psychiatrist in the country.[3]

Chakraborty was involved in the Indian Psychiatric Society, starting first with a position as general secretary and eventually elected as president in 1976.[4] She was the first woman to serve as president of the society.[5]

Career

She worked in the field of transcultural psychiatry.[6] Her studies included the visual hallucinations of gods and goddess that she noted were particularly common in women. In 1991 she published an article titled Culture, colonialism, and psychiatry[7] at the invitation of The Lancet.[2] Following her death in 2015[3] her work was covered in a chapter by Mandira Sen[8] and in a book on mental hospitals where Chakraborty described her experiences with the changing practice of psychiatry in India over the course of her career.[4]

Selected publications

  • Chakraborty, Ajita (January 1966). "Visual Hallucination". Indian Journal of Psychiatry. 8 (1): 21. ISSN 0019-5545.
  • CHAKRABORTY, AJITA (1969–1970). "BIRTH ORDER AND MENTAL ILLNESS". British Journal of Social Psychiatry. 3 (4): 231–36.
  • Chakraborty, Ajita (1990). Social stress and mental health: a social-psychiatric field study of Calcutta (1. publ ed.). New Delhi: Sage Publications. ISBN 978-0-8039-9633-5.[9]
  • Chakraborty, Ajita (2010-01-01). My Life as a Psychiatrist - Memoirs and Essays. Stree. ISBN 978-81-85604-92-3.[10]

Honors and awards

The Bombay Psychiatric Society awarded her with a lifetime achievement award.[5]

References

  1. ↑ Bhattacharya, Debasis; Bhattacharya, Rahul (April 2016). "Professor Ajita Chakraborty MB, DPM, FRCP (Ed.) FRCPsych: Formerly Director of Postgraduate Medical and Research Institute, Professor and Head of the Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, Calcutta, India". BJPsych Bulletin. 40 (2): 109. doi:10.1192/pb.bp.115.051995. ISSN 2056-4694. PMC 4817665.
  2. 1 2 Prabhakar, Manasa (July 2021). "Dr. Ajitha Chakraborty: The first practicing Indian female psychiatrist (October 31, 1926–May 08, 2015)". Telangana Journal of Psychiatry. 7 (2): 148. doi:10.4103/tjp.tjp_40_21. ISSN 2772-8706.
  3. 1 2 Bhattacharya, Debasis; Bhattacharya, Rahul (December 2015). "In Memoriam – Professor Ajita Chakraborty". Transcultural Psychiatry. 52 (6): NP7–NP9. doi:10.1177/1363461515612029. ISSN 1363-4615. PMID 26578635. S2CID 35142343.
  4. 1 2 Bhattacharyya, Ranjan (2018). "The development of mental hospitals in West Bengal: A brief history and changing trends". Indian Journal of Psychiatry. 60 (6): S198–S202. doi:10.4103/psychiatry.IndianJPsychiatry_432_17. ISSN 0019-5545. PMC 5836338. PMID 29527048.
  5. 1 2 Ghosal, Malay Kumar (2015). "Professor Ajita Chakraborty". Bengal Journal of Psychiatry: 40–41. doi:10.51332/bjp.2015.v20.i1.48. ISSN 2348-9227.
  6. ↑ Reddy, Preetha (26 January 2020). "Time for gender parity in leadership in healthcare". Gulf News ; Dubai – via Proquest.
  7. ↑ Chakraborty, A. (May 1991). "Culture, colonialism, and psychiatry". The Lancet. 337 (8751): 1204–1207. doi:10.1016/0140-6736(91)92869-4. ISSN 0140-6736. S2CID 33640244.
  8. ↑ Saikia, Dhruba J. (2018). Krishna, Sumi; Chadha, Gita (eds.). "FEMINISTS AND SCIENCE: Critiques and Changing Perspectives in India, Vol. I". India International Centre Quarterly. 45 (1): 159–164. ISSN 0376-9771. JSTOR 45129822.
  9. ↑ Reviews of Social stress and mental health
  10. ↑ Review of My Life as a Psychiatrist
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