Book
Mental health and critical community care: Critical perspectives from India (to be published by Routledge in 2025)
Journal Publications
Dhatchanamoorthy, S. & Kottai, S. R. (2025). Archives, mental health systems and the history of mental health in colonial south India: Critical questions. Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (in press).
Ebrahim, N. & Kottai, S.R. Psychiatry, care and consent: Critical questions (Book review). Indian Journal of Medical Ethics.
S. & Kottai, S. R. (2025). Archives, mental health systems and the history of mental health in colonial south India: Critical questions. Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (Accepted).
Kottai, S. R. (2024). World Mental Health Day, Medicalised Mental Health Awareness and Psychiatric Subjectivation: Stories and Anxieties of ‘Unlivability’. ReFrame VI: Global Mental Health from the Margins. Mariwala Health Initiative Journal (6).
Kottai, S. R. (2024). "Mirroring” the world v/s “world-making”: The crisis of ethics in Indian mental health systems. Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry. DOI:10.1891/EHPP-2023-0022.
Kottai, S. R. (2024). "Doctors advised to take medicines to remove these thoughts”: The violence and violations in sexual mental health care in community mental health programmes in Kerala. Community Development Journal, https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsae009
Kottai, S. R. & Ranganathan, S (2023). “Initially, medicines will be given, and then we need to study the case”:Medicalising perspectives about chronicity and mental health care in Kerala. Anthropology and Medicine, 30(2), 153-170. DOI:10.1080/13648470.2023.2212206
Kottai, S.R.(2022). Social sensitivity of mental health systems. Economic and Political Weekly, 57 (37). https://www.epw.in/journal/2022/37/comment/social-sensitivity-mental-health-systems.html
Kottai, S.R. (2022). Book review of Hayfield, Nikki, Bisexual and pansexual identities: Exploring and challenging invisibility and invalidation. Routledge, 2020.131 pp.; ISBN978-1-138-61377-5, Feminism and Psychology. doi:10.1177/09593535221121416
Kottai, S. & Ranganathan, S (2022). A mental health epidemic? Critical questions on the National Mental Health Survey. Economic and Political Weekly, 57 (3), 19-24.
Kottai. S. (2021). Farmers’ protests, death by suicides and mental health systems in India: Critical questions. Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, 23 (2), 70-88. DOI: 10.1891/EHPP-2021-0004
Kottai, S. (2021). Review of Environmental Politics by Elizabeth DeSombre, Environment and Society, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.3167/ares.2021.120114
Kottai, S. (2021). LGBTQIA+ rights, mental health systems and curative violence in India. 7 (2), Indian Journal of Medical Ethics. DOI:10.20529/IJME.2021.090
Kottai, S. (2021). Book review of Unruly Figures: Queerness, Sex Work, and the Politics of Sexuality in Kerala. Contemporary South Asia, 29 (1), 117-118. https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2021.1884370
Kottai, S.(2020). On the cusp of ‘modernity’: Ayurveda’s tryst with ‘development’ in Nepal. Book review of Mary Cameron, 2019, Three Fruits: Nepali Ayurvedic Doctors on Health, Nature, and Social Change. Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 264 ISBN 978-1-4985-9423-3 . Anthropology News.
Kottai, S.(2020). Migrant workers and the politics of mental health. Economic and Political Weekly, 55 (31).
Kottai, S. & Ranganathan, S. (2020). Task-shifting in community mental health in Kerala: Tensions and ruptures. Medical Anthropology: Cross-cultural studies in health and illness. 39 (6), 538-552. DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2020.1722122
Kottai, S. & Ranganathan, S. (2019). Fractured narratives of psy disciplines and the LGBTQIA+ rights movement in India: A critical examination. Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, 4 (2), 100-110. DOI: 10.20529/IJME.2019.009
Kottai, S. (2018). How Kerala’s poor tribals are being branded as mentally ill. Economic and Political Weekly Engage, 53 (24).
Kottai, S. & Ranganathan, S. (2018). Reimagining Schizophrenia: New Voices from the Margins [Book review]. Economic & Political Weekly, LIII (4), 31-34.
Kottai, S. & Ranganathan, S. (2017). Book review of Eating Drugs: Psychopharmaceutical Pluralism in India. Psychology and Developing Societies, 29(2), 301–305.
Das, B., S, Ghosh, S., & Kottai, S. (2016). Practice of Family therapy in a heteronormative society of India from a Queer theory perspective, Open Journal of Psychiatry and Allied Sciences. 8 (1), 15-17.
Kottai, S & Sia, S., K (2013). Inculcating democratic policing in India: A psychological perspective. Indian Journal of Positive Psychology, 4(4), 580-583.
Kottai, S. (2012). Effectiveness of multiple psychotherapeutic interventions in the treatment of adjustment disorder with prolonged depressive reaction in a teenage girl. Indian Journal of Community Psychology, 1(8), 100-112.
Book chapters
Kottai, S. “ Marginality, alterity and mental health in India: A critical analysis”. In Sheshadri, S (Ed.) “Reaching Out: Towards a relevant response to Mental Health”. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan. (Under review)
Kottai, S. R. "Forensic Psychology in India: Examining the crisis of values in the profession" In Needs, Chirape & Boonzaier (Eds.). Decolonising Forensic Psychology: Fundamental Questions and Reimagined Futures. Routledge. (Under review).
View the video abstract HERE and a short description of the book HERE
Announcements
Doctoral thesis announcement. "Interrogating care, chronicity and expansion of patienthood: An ethnography of community mental health programmes in contemporary India", Disability and Society, 35 (8). https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2020.1787745
International Magazines/ Blogs
Kottai. S (2020). Legal capacity for persons with psychosocial disabilities: Reclaiming personhood through UNCRPD. #WHATWENEED CAMPAIGN, TCI Asia Pacific.
Kottai. S (2020). From amelioration to transformation: Hopes for mental health in human rights based systems. #WHATWENEED CAMPAIGN, TCI Asia Pacific.
Kottai. S (2019). Sitting on the fence, playing to the gallery of psychiatry: Clinical psychology disrupted. Mad In Asia Pacific.
Kottai, S. & Ranganathan, S. (September 2017). Interrupting caregiving, inviting distress-sharing: Narratives of care from people living on the streets. Café Dissensus. ISSN 2373-177X
National newsletter/ magazines
Kottai, S. (2020). Tezpur: A city with a mind of its own. Voice of margin.
Kottai, S. (2015). Mental health policy in India: Unpacking the ‘Right to mental health care’, Medico friend circle bulletin, No. 365-366, 22-24.
Kottai, S. (2014). New Mental Health Policy: Is it critical? The Indian Economist.
Kottai, S. (2014). Homesickness and tuberculosis: crossing lines and inventing the psychiatric connection, The Indian Economist.