Nepal Medical College/Physiological Society of Nepal

In Nepal, still orthodox views exist about diseases such as mass hysteria, epilepsy, depression. These diseases attributed to nervous system dysfunction are most often associated with social stigma especially in rural areas, where peoples seek the help of shamans to placate the so-called angry spirits and deities. With a low literacy rate, lack of awareness at the community level, and even lack of primary health care centers, most of the victims’ families surrounded by the conundrum and seek the help of so-called pain healer-Shamans. It is high time to educate the orthodox society and to empower the victims/patients to seek psychiatrists/neurologist help rather than wasting time with such bogus persons. This project aims to increase awareness about epilepsy and depression in one of the rural areas of Nepal. For this purpose, we traveled about 150-kilometer to reach school namely Shree Kalinag Secondary School and taught students (mainly Grade 10) via visual media about the pathophysiology of diseases like epilepsy and depression. We could believe them that these diseases were not about the angry deities rather a neural origin.

We strongly believe that students from the school will carry important information to their home and communities that these diseases, Epilepsy and Depression, are not about the angry deities rather a neural origin.

Please try to include more crew members to participate/organize the events. Together we can win.

The information about the organization of the event was posted on Facebook, due to which a number of physiologists from my country asked me about the grant and eager to participate in the project as the facilitator.