The construction of mental health as a technological problem in India

ABSTRACT

This paper points to an underexplored relationship of reinforcement between processes of quantification and digitisation in the construction of mental health as amenable to technological intervention, in India. Increasingly, technology is used to collect mental health data, to diagnose mental health problems, and as a route of mental health intervention and clinical management. At the same time, mental health has become recognised as a new public health priority in India, and within national and global public health agendas. We explore two sites of the technological problematisation of mental health in India: a large-scale survey calculating prevalence, and a smartphone app to manage stress. We show how digital technology is deployed both to frame a ‘need’ for, and to implement, mental health interventions. We then trace the epistemologies and colonial histories of ‘psy’ technologies, which question assumptions of digital empowerment and of top-down ‘western’ imposition. Our findings show that in India such technologies work both to discipline and liberate users. The paper aims to encourage global debate inclusive of those positioned inside and outside of the ‘black box’ of mental health technology and data production, and to contribute to shaping a future research agenda that analyses quantification and digitisation as key drivers in global advocacy to make mental health count.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital technology
• ethnography
• India
• mental health
• quantification

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Kimberly Lacroix for reading an earlier draft of this article and giving such insightful feedback. In 2018, the authors co-organised a workshop on ‘Psy-technologies, subjectivities and inter-disciplinary languages: a conversation on biopolitics and contexts"’ at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. The authors would like to say an enormous thank you to the co-organisers of this workshop – Asha Achuthan and Bindhulakshmi P. – and to all the attendees for such fruitful and enthusiastic discussion, which helped to shape the final stages of this article. They would also like to thank the British Academy for funding the research project which made this article possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. www.healthy-india.org/.

2. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.myphoneme.www.stress&hl=en.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the British Academy [IC160362].