Medical anthropologists have not paid enough attention to the variation at the level of the individual practitioners of biomedicine, and anthropological critiques of biomedical psychiatry as it is practiced in settings outside the Global North have tended to depict psychiatrists in monolithic terms. In this article, we attempt to demonstrate that, at least in the case of India, some psychiatrists perceive limitations in the biomedical model and the cultural assumptions behind biomedical practices and ideologies. This paper focuses on three practitioners who supplement their own practices with local and alternative healing modalities derived from South Asian psychologies, philosophies, systems of medicine and religious and ritual practices. The diverging psychiatric practices in this paper represent a rough continuum. They range from a bold and confident psychiatrist who uses various techniques including ritual healing to another who yearns to incorporate more Indian philosophy and psychology in psychiatric practice and encourages students of ayurvedic medicine to more fully embrace the science they are learning to a less proactive psychiatrist who does not describe a desire to change his practice but who is respectful and accepting of ayurvedic treatments that some patients also undergo. Rather than simply applying a hegemonic biomedical psychiatry, these psychiatrists offer the possibility of a more locally-attuned, context sensitive psychiatric practice.

医学人类学家没有对生物医学个体从业者水平的差异给予足够的重视，而在北半球以外的环境中实践的生物医学精神病学的人类学批评往往以单一的术语来描述精神病学家。在本文中，我们试图证明，至少在印度，一些精神病学家认识到生物医学模式以及生物医学实践和意识形态背后的文化假设的局限性。本文重点关注三位从业者，他们用源自南亚心理学、哲学、医学体系以及宗教和仪式实践的本地和替代治疗方式来补充自己的实践。本文中不同的精神病学实践代表了一个粗略的连续体。他们的范围包括大胆而自信的精神科医生，他们使用包括仪式治疗在内的各种技术，到另一位渴望将更多印度哲学和心理学融入精神病学实践并鼓励阿育吠陀医学学生更充分地接受他们正在学习的科学的精神科医生，再到不太积极主动的精神科医生，他们没有描述改变他的做法的愿望，但他尊重并接受一些患者也接受的阿育吠陀治疗。这些精神病学家不是简单地应用霸权的生物医学精神病学，而是提供了一种更加适合当地、环境敏感的精神病学实践的可能性。