Mitali Sakaria
Trigger Warning: Mention of death, suicide.
In 2018, the Bhatia family, which consisted of 11 people (seven females and four males, ages 15 to 80), was found hanging on the top floor of their house in North Delhi's Burari neighborhood. In their three-part Netflix documentary series House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths, Leena Yadav and Anubhav Chopra document the trails of the horrendous incident, illuminating the whys and hows of a typical middle-class Hindu family comprising of three generations seemed to have suffered from folie à deux, or what is also known as shared psychotic disorder. The documentary tried to paint a picture of the family and understand what went wrong with this seemingly normal family by using film clips, interviews with family members, neighbors, investigative police officers, forensic experts, mental health professionals, and journalists, also including the media's fascination with the incident (Yadav, 2021).
The biopsychosocial viewpoint is used throughout the documentary to highlight the potential causes of why the incident occurred. However, it falls short of defining shared psychosis and psychosis in general for the wider population. Additionally, the cultural factors involved in the development of psychosis were hardly highlighted. Thus, in keeping with the aforementioned, the following piece defines psychosis and shared psychosis while also shedding light on culture in particular, its impact, and its significance in psychosis. The purpose of the paper is to draw attention to the social variables that may have contributed to the incident's development into a case of shared psychosis as opposed to psychosis in a single individual. Finally, it will also provide insight into the significance of taking religious beliefs into account in clinical practice.
According to the American Psychological Association, psychosis is an unusual mental condition marked by severe difficulties with reality testing. Serious impairments in perception, cognition, and cognitive processing, as well as emotions or affect, which show up as behavioral phenomena like delusions, hallucinations, and noticeably disorganized speech, are the hallmarks of psychosis (APA Dictionary of Psychology, n.d.).In line with the above, a shared psychotic disorder (in the DSM-IV-TR) is the development of an identical or comparable delusion in a person who is in a close relationship with someone else (referred to as the "inducer" or the "main case") who already has a psychotic disease with strong delusions (APA Dictionary of Psychology, n.d.). Numerous people may be affected by shared psychotic illness (e.g., an entire family). In very simple words, psychosis is a condition where the individual loses his ability to deal with whatever is happening in life in a rational way and during this condition when people around the “main case” start to develop similar delusions is what we can call as then shared psychosis.
Significant factors like delusions in shared psychosis include the elements of a religious belief, its cultural resonances, and its impact (McKay, R. T., & Ross, R. M.,2021). The exceptional may begin to seem typical when other people share similar ideas, thus saying that delusions are a type of belief isn't altogether incorrect. Since both religious beliefs and delusions can result from abnormal experiences and neurological disorders, it is crucial to understand social dynamics in the Burari case and the possibility of entire delusional subcultures, especially given the indications that at least some religious beliefs may be abnormal (Pierre, J. M.,2001).
The documentary covered a lot of visuals wherein the family appeared to be performing a rite at their house that involved making symbolic representations of a Banyan tree's dangling roots, a sacred tree explained in Hindu mythology (Yadav, 2021). One of the notebooks that the forensic teams discovered at their home spoke about the ceremony in detail. Lalit Chundawat who was believed to be the primary inducer or the main case, felt as though his father, the household's chief who had passed away in 2007, had paid him a visit. Lalit, who supported the family financially, had previously experienced traumatic events (both physical and psychological), for which mental assistance had been suggested but not sought after (Yadav, 2021). He had a near-death experience that left him with functional mutism (Yadav, 2021). One of the rituals recorded in their diaries was the family's daily recitation of the Hindu devotional song Hanuman Chalisa, until he suddenly recovered his voice a year later (Yadav, 2021).
We are raised among communities of people who hold the same values. Particularly in India, religion has a major influence on how we live. The majority of what we do as a family is dictated by religious practises. For the most part, we rely on religion to ensure our well-being. And it's a widely held belief that following a religious path represents the only approach to living. Furthermore, it is worth noting that the patriarch of the household acts as the dominant chief and makes decisions for the entire family. Consequently, we are not really allowed to question such choices and are required to follow whatever the elders in the house tell us. Additionally beliefs in ghosts, existence of spirits is also quite rampant in India.
The family, I think, believed that their religious beliefs were responsible for their success and Lalit's unexpected recovery. Lalit's unexpected recovery and the family's financial success caused their religious convictions to progressively become stronger. The journals also state that the family followed the rules covertly for a period of eleven years. No one ever seriously questioned Lalit's orders, which could have been related to the traditional value of submitting to the head of the household. Furthermore, societal presumptions regarding the presence of ghosts and spirits may have contributed to the notion that Lalit's deceased father was communicating with the family through Lalit. I suppose that the family's collective onset of comparable illusions in this case was mostly influenced by societal and religious beliefs.
Although, there are no precise rules for separating "normal" religious beliefs from "pathological" religious delusions in therapeutic practice (Pierre, J. M.,2001). The documentary, which focused in particular on Lalit and his experiences with mental illness, encouraged us to think about the value of comprehending cultural customs, society norms, and religious beliefs in addition to just the individual. Not just in this instance of shared psychosis, in every research of mental illness, taking into account such circumstances is crucial. The documentary focuses on how it's crucial to use a dimensional approach to distinguish between what is and is not abnormal (Pierre, J. M.,2001).
References
APA Dictionary of Psychology. (n.d.). Dictionary.apa.org. Retrieved November 20, 2022, from
https://dictionary.apa.org/shared-psychotic-disorder
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Johnson, S., Sathyaseelan, M., Charles, H., Jeyaseelan, V., & Jacob, K. S. (2012). Insight,
psychopathology,explanatory models and outcome of schizophrenia in India: a prospective 5-year cohort study. BMC psychiatry, 12, 159. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-12-159
McKay, R. T., & Ross, R. M. (2021). Religion and delusion. Current opinion in psychology, 40,
160–166. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.10.002
Pierre, J. M. (2001). Faith or delusion? At the crossroads of religion and psychosis. Journal of
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Yadav, L. (Director). (2021). House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths
https://www.netflix.com/in/title/81095095?s=a&trkid=13747225&t=cp&vlang=en&clip=81439423
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