Rural Mental Health and Psychological Myths

Abstract

Background of the Research: According to twentieth century psychiatrist Carl Jung, myth is a necessary aspect of the human psyche which needs to find meaning and order in a world. Human health is in the hands of self-believing about his/her health strongly that everyone who came to this earth will be alive with blessings of god/goddess when time comes, Eman the god will be with his rope to take the breath of human being which is stated as an etiology myth. This basic beliefs leads in every one mind set up to hope on each individual life ahead and to do their socio economic activities on daily basis. This leads to consumerism and an indirectly positive belief on life creates demand for goods and service from household economy to a national economy. So, basically good health of human being is the prime factor for every walk of their life to reach their desired socio economic destination.
Aim of the Study: Here, in this paper, the researcher made an attempt to find the nexus between mental health of rural inhabitants and their psychological myth.
Research Methodology: The methodology adopted for the research fact was field study by using an interview schedule as a tool for collecting the data from a district named Theni in Tamil Nadu. The sample size taken was 300. Targeted population was rural inhabitants in Theni district. A Purposive non random sampling was used in this study.
Findings and Discussions: The obtained results from the field level study categorized that 36.6 percentages of rural respondents who were in the age group of fifty to sixty had a strong belief in witchcraft or psychological myths like destroying a person’s health and putting that person in bed with not able to do functioning of leg or hand by witchcraft (seivenai) and black magic. The same percentage or the same group of respondents had a belief in existing of ghost; Persons who died in accidents, suicide will penetrate into other body and exploit the health of host body. It’s very hard to change the psychological myths because of strong beliefs in existing of unknown energy known as god of all religion. As a result of beliefs, a good amount of economic time and money is spent for their mental satisfaction by 36.6 percentages of sample respondents in the study area. Hence, Myths always exist in a corner of human psychology in rural population but a degree of variation in accepting the myths. The remaining percentage of rural respondents in the age group of below fifty were the believe in advancement of science and technology, for example increasing subscribers in smart mobile phone and using internet, sending their sons and daughters to higher education for the sake of individual family betterment in micro level and as in macro nation’s betterment which is an another feature of the interviewed respondents. Among the ten respondents strongly three were believe in myths that were exclamatory to the artificial intelligence era. The aspects of money and time spend towards the myths may be taken as scope for further research in any geographical area if it exist.