The First Lady Of Mental Health

Even at 98, Sarada Menon, India’s first woman psychiatrist, is easing the pain of our mental anguish

- Bhavya Dore

Sarada Menon chortles heartily. The 98-year-old is stumped by the question: How many patients has she treated in her long and storied career in psychiatry? “That’s too much to ask, I don’t know,” she says. At least 1,000? “Yes, yes,” she concedes.

Other numbers are easier to pin down. The number of women psychiatrists in India before her: zero. The languages she speaks fluently: four. Her current enthusiasm levels: infinite. She’s received a Padma Bhushan, built and led institutions, worked on prison reform and in flood-prone districts. She has researched, rehabilitated, taught, treated; and packed a bursting resume ever since she finished her MBBS in 1947.

Menon is speaking with me over Skype from her home in Chennai where she still practises, seeing patients daily online. Bespectacled, and quick to smile, she wears her sari crisply and her pioneering status lightly. “I went from day to day, doing what I had to do. I didn’t think about other things,” she says. “How to better the effects of our treatments, was my only goal. I never bothered about anything else.”