The Madhouse at the Lotus Lake (Dr. Erna M Hoch)

Abstract

In an era when immigration to the West was a norm with doctors who were trained in the subcontinent-there was a curious case of ‘reverse migration’. A psychiatrist trained in the best institutions of Zurich chose to work at AIIMS, New Delhi and thereafter came to work in Srinagar as a professor of psychiatry and transform the rather backward ‘madhouse into a modern psychiatry hospital’. Before she came to Srinagar she was the deputy head of psychiatry at the AIIMS, New Delhi. She wanted to take up a job that would offer more opportunities for development and pioneering work. On a chance visit to Srinagar, she saw an opportunity for herself to build a ‘psychiatry hospital’ and a department from ‘nothing’. Not many would have at that point of time dared to venture into those ‘backward conditions’.