Soha Ali Khan's podcast All About Her has released a conversation between actor, doctor, and transgender advocate Dr Trinetra Haldar and psychiatrist Dr Arman Pandey on gender identity, mental health, and systemic prejudice in Indian healthcare.
During the discussion, Trinetra revealed that her medical curriculum contained an entire chapter labelling queer people as mentally ill. "In the second year of MBBS, we study forensic medicine," she explained. "There is a chapter on 'sexual perversions' that very elaborately describes queer people as mentally ill and deranged."
When Soha asked if that chapter still exists, Trinetra confirmed it does, though it is being changed. "It's humiliating to sit in a room of future doctors and be told by a forensic medicine expert that who you are is fundamentally deranged and mentally ill," she said.
Trinetra also noted that when families seek answers from doctors, the profession's training matters. "If doctors are being trained in this way for centuries, and this is the information that doctors provide when a family reaches out, it's devastating," she said. "It reinforces every negative bias, every bit of phobia on that person."
The Made In Heaven star pointed out that medicine has absorbed the prejudices of Victorian-era science. "Every profession absorbs the prejudices and stigmas of its time, and medicine is no exception," she said.
The episode released on YouTube, and addresses healthcare equity, representation, and allyship in India.
