Ajita Chakraborty (1926 - 2015) was one of the first women psychiatrists in India.
Early life and education
Chakraborty was born in Calcutta in the state of Bengal in 1926.[1] She graduated from
Scottish Church College in Calcutta in 1944,[2] and in 1950 Chakraborty qualified as a doctor by graduating from
Calcutta Medical College. She continued her medical education in the United Kingdom where she trained in psychiatry. In 1960 she went back to India, thereby becoming the first female psychiatrist in the country.[3]
Chakraborty was involved in the
Indian Psychiatric Society, starting first with a position as general secretary and eventually elected as president in 1976.[4] She was the first woman to serve as president of the society.[5]
Career
She worked in the field of
transcultural psychiatry.[6] Her studies included the visual hallucinations of gods and goddess that she noted were particularly common in women.[citation needed] In 1991 she published an article titled Culture, colonialism, and psychiatry[7] at the invitation of The Lancet.[2] Following her death in 2015[3] her work was covered in a chapter by Mandira Sen[8] and in a book on mental hospitals where Chakraborty described her experiences with the changing practice of psychiatry in India over the course of her career.[4]
Chakraborty, Ajita (1990). Social stress and mental health: a social-psychiatric field study of Calcutta (1. publ ed.). New Delhi: Sage Publications.
ISBN978-0-8039-9633-5.[9]
Chakraborty, Ajita (2010-01-01). My Life as a Psychiatrist - Memoirs and Essays. Stree.
ISBN978-81-85604-92-3.[10]