Benares Hindu University in the Indian city of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, is launching a six-month training program that will teach how to heal people who allegedly see ghosts or are possessed by them.
According to the BBC, the six-month Bhoot Vidya course will begin enrollment in January 2020. They will teach the treatment of psychosomatic disorders, which are often confused with the paranormal.
The course will be taught at the Ayurveda Department of Benares University. Chairwoman of the Yaminovo Chair Bushan Tripathi said the school will be the first in India to teach doctors "Ayurvedic remedies for ghost-related diseases."
In India, the problem of mental illness is quite acute, the BBC notes. Thus, according to the World Health Organization, about 20% of the country's 1.3 billion population may suffer from depression at least once in their life. At the same time, fewer than 4 thousand mental health specialists officially work in the country.
In addition, in many regions of India, especially the poor, it is not customary to talk about mental illness, and little is known about them, so people there often turn to shamans or witches for help.