LGBTQIA+ rights, mental health systems, and curative violence in India
conversion therapy; LGBTQIA+ rights; mental health; sexual identities; social justice
This commentary examines the spaceattitudeadministrative complex of mainstream mental health systems with regard to its responses to decriminalisation of nonheteronormative sexual identities. Even though the Supreme Court, in its 2018 order, instructed governments to disseminate its judgment widely, there has been no such attempt till date. None of the governmentrun mental health institutions has initiated an LGBTQIA+ rights-based awareness campaign on the judgment, considering that lack of awareness about sexualities in itself remains a critical factor for a noninclusive environment that forces queer individuals to end their lives. That the State did not come up with any awareness campaign as mandated in the landmark judgment reflects an attitude of queerphobia in the State. Drawing on the concept of biocommunicability, analysing the public interfaces of staterun mental health institutions, and the responses of mental health systems to the death by suicide of a queer student, I illustrate how mental health institutions function to further antiLGBTQIA+ sentiments of the state by churning out customerpatients out of structural violence and systemic inequalities, benefitting the mental health economy at the cost of queer citizens on whom curative violence is practised. Indian Journal of Medical Ethics 2022.
Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, Vol-7, No. 2, pp. 127-133.
All Open Access; Hybrid Gold Open Access
https://doi.org/10.20529/IJME.2021.090 https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85133107069&doi=10.20529%2fIJME.2021.090&partnerID=40&md5=33cf5f80cf18388f245596385edee179
Kottai S.R., Department of Psychology, CHRIST (Deemed-to-be) University, Bengaluru, India