A number of prominent Sikhs, doctors, professors, engineers, businessmen, psychiatrists and social scientists were in Washington D.C. two months ago, at a wedding reception. Some of us, compelled by the emotional pull of like-mindedness, and our abiding faith in our beloved Gurus, sat around for hours, while the crowd enjoyed the scrumptious meal and Bhangra and Gidha thereafter. “Sometimes I feel overwhelmed, baffled and bewildered inspite of being an “expert” in the mental health field. Then I wonder about the growing number of fellow Sikhs in this country suffering silently with little or no access to support services, normally available through families and close knit communities back home, the homes we have left behind in order to make it in the highly competitive society of the western world,” said a clinical psychiatrist practicing for over 20 years in the U.S.A. Proudly retaining his identity as a Gursikh throughout a stay in U.K. and now in this country, he has unflinching faith in Gurbani and its application in solving the most difficult problems of life, and finds the Sikh philosophy extremely useful in his profession of psychiatry,
“Freedom leads to responsibility, competition leads to loneliness, and lack of anchor faith in religion leads to chaos and mental crisis,” said social scientist. “
You cannot imagine the kind of dilemma our Sikh youth are facing. As a psychiatrist, come across patients of almost all different religions, nationalities of origin
And varieties of social and cultural backgrounds. One thing that haunts me, is that Indians and ¢specially Sikh youth who come to me as patients suffer from the most subtle and complex mental health disorders,” said a female psychiatrist with an carnets desire to protect the Sikh youth from the emotional anarchy of a kind unknown to the past generation of the Sikhs living in this part of the world,
Article extracted from this publication >> October 23, 1992
