Mental Health Concerns and Challenges in India: The Way Forward

The prevalence of mental illness in India is rapidly increasing and of grave concern is the decreasing age of onset among the youth. This article below outlines the significant concerns and challenges of the mental health care system in India and proposes key measures to deal with these complex challenges. This paper is divided into four sections: the first section focuses on the complex nature of mental illness with respect to overlapping symptoms of various disorders, co-morbidities and the mediating role of physiological factors. The role of the stigma surrounding mental illness in reducing help-seeking behaviour and adherence to treatment is highlighted. The second part of the article outlines the various challenges in the treatment of mental illness with respect to the lack of trained manpower, lack of formulation-based treatment, the over-emphasis on diagnosis, and various such critical factors. The third section outlines the challenges at the policy level including the lacunae of funding into mental health, lack of insurance for mental illness, and lack of awareness about the rights of people with mental illness. The article concludes with the enumeration of the various indirect contributory factors in the rise of mental illness such as increasing demands and stress, the mediating role of technology, rapid social change, unemployment, and the fragmentation of family and consequent isolation. The various measures to bridge the gap in India's mental health care system are simultaneously discussed. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.387413

The Equilibrium Structure of Prolate Magnetized Molecular Cores

The structure of molecular cloud cores supported by thermal pressure and a poloidal magnetic field is reinvestigated in the magnetohydrostatic and axisymmetric approximation. In addition to oblate configurations found in earlier work, solutions yielding prolate spheroidal shapes have also been obtained for a reference state described by a uniform sphere threaded by a uniform background magnetic field. The solutions for prolate configurations are found to be relevant for lower masses than for their oblate counterparts. Of particular importance is the result that the prolate cloud cores have radii less than a maximum given by $0.25 pc (a/0.2km/s)^2 (P_{\rm ext}/10^{-12} dyne/cm^2)^{-1/2}$, where $a$ is the sound speed and $P_{\rm ext}$ is the external pressure of the background medium. The existence of such solutions obviates the presence of toroidal fields in such modeled structures.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication by ApJ

Evidence for a fundamental stellar upper mass limit from clustered star formation

The observed masses of the most massive stars do not surpass about 150Msun. This may either be a fundamental upper mass limit which is defined by the physics of massive stars and/or their formation, or it may simply reflect the increasing sparsity of such very massive stars so that observing even higher-mass stars becomes unlikely in the Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds. It is shown here that if the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a power-law with a Salpeter exponent (alpha=2.35) for massive stars then the richest very young cluster R136 seen in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) should contain stars with masses larger than 750Msun. If, however, the IMF is formulated by consistently incorporating a fundamental upper mass limit then the observed upper mass limit is arrived at readily even if the IMF is invariant. An explicit turn-down or cutoff of the IMF near 150Msun is not required; our formulation of the problem contains this implicitly. We are therefore led to conclude that a fundamental maximum stellar mass near 150Msun exists, unless the true IMF has alpha>2.8.Comment: MNRAS, accepted, 6 page

Dust and HCO+ Gas in the Star Forming Core W3-SE

We report new results from CARMA observations of both continuum and HCO+(1-0) emission at 3.4 mm from W3-SE, a molecular core of intermediate mass, together with the continuum observations at 1.1 and 0.85/0.45 mm with the SMA and JCMT. A continuum emission core elongated from SE to NW (~10"), has been observed at the and further resolved into a double source with the SMA at 1.1 mm, with a separation of ~4". Together with the measurements from the Spitzer and MSX at mid-IR, we determined the SED of W3-SE and fit it with a thermal dust emission model, suggesting the presence of two dust components with different temperatures. The emission at mm/submm wavelengths is dominated by a major cold (~41 K) with a mass of ~65 Msun. In addition, there is a weaker hot component (~400 K) which accounts for emission in the mid-IR, suggesting that a small fraction of dust has been heated by newly formed stars. We also imaged the molecular core in the HCO+(1-0) line using CARMA at an angular resolution ~6". With the CARMA observations, we have verified the presence of a blue-dominated double peak profile toward this core. The line profile cannot be explained by infall alone. The broad velocity wings of the line profile suggest that other kinematics such as outflows within the central 6" of the core likely dominate the resulting spectrum. The kinematics of the sub-structures of this core suggest that the molecular gas outside the main component appears to be dominated by the bipolar outflow originated from the dust core with a dynamical age of >30000 yr. Our analysis, based on the observations at wavelengths from mm/submm to mid-IR suggests that the molecular core W3-SE hosts a group of newly formed young stars and protostars.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures; accepted by Ap

Boyle's law and gravitational instability

We have re-examined the classical problem of the macroscopic equation of state for a hydrostatic isothermal self-gravitating gas cloud bounded by an external medium at constant pressure. We have obtained analytical conditions for its equilibrium and stability without imposing any specific shape and symmetry to the cloud density distribution. The equilibrium condition can be stated in the form of an upper limit to the cloud mass; this is found to be inversely proportional to the power 3/2 of a form factor \mu characterizing the shape of the cloud. In this respect, the spherical solution, associated with the maximum value of the form factor, \mu = 1, turns out to correspond to the shape that is most difficult to realize. Surprisingly, the condition that defines the onset of the Bonnor instability (or gravothermal catastrophe) can be cast in the form of an upper limit to the density contrast within the cloud that is independent of the cloud shape. We have then carried out a similar analysis in the two-dimensional case of infinite cylinders, without assuming axisymmetry. The results obtained in this paper generalize well-known results available for spherical or axisymmetric cylindrical isothermal clouds that have had wide astrophysical applications, especially in the study of the interstellar medium.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, to appear in A&

The environment of the infrared dust bubble N65: a mutiwavelength study

AIMS: We investigate the environment of the infrared dust bubble N65 and search for evidence of triggered star formation in its surroundings. METHODS: We performed a multiwavelength study of the region around N65 with data taken from large-scale surveys: Two Micron All Sky Survey, GLIMPSE, MIPSGAL, SCUBA, and GRS. We analyzed the distribution of the molecular gas and dust in the environment of N65 and performed infrared photometry and spectral analysis of point sources to search for young stellar objects and identify the ionizing star candidates. RESULTS: We found a molecular cloud that appears to be fragmented into smaller clumps along the N65 PDR. This indicates that the so-called collect and collapse process may be occurring. Several young stellar objects are distributed among the molecular clumps. They may represent a second generation of stars whose formation was triggered by the bubble expanding into the molecular gas. We dentified O-type stars inside N65, which are the most reliable ionizing star candidates.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in A&A. Figures degraded to reduce file siz

Direct Evidence for Two-Fluid Effects in Molecular Clouds

We present a combination of theoretical and simulation-based examinations of the role of two-fluid ambipolar drift on molecular line widths. The dissipation provided by ion-neutral interactions can produce a significant difference between the widths of neutral molecules and the widths of ionic species, comparable to the sound speed. We demonstrate that Alfven waves and certain families of magnetosonic waves become strongly damped on scales comparable to the ambipolar diffusion scale. Using the RIEMANN code, we simulate two-fluid turbulence with ionization fractions ranging from 10^{-2} to 10^{-6}. We show that the wave damping causes the power spectrum of the ion velocity to drop below that of the neutral velocity when measured on a relative basis. Following a set of motivational observations by Li & Houde (2008), we produce synthetic line width-size relations that shows a difference between the ion and neutral line widths, illustrating that two-fluid effects can have an observationally detectable role in modifying the MHD turbulence in the clouds.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, submitted to MNRA

Multiple outflows in IRAS 19410+2336

PdBI high-spatial resolution CO observations combined with near-infrared H2 data disentangle at least 7 (maybe even 9) molecular outflows in the massive star-forming region IRAS19410+2336. Position-velocity diagrams of the outflows reveal Hubble-like relationships similar to outflows driven by low-mass objects. Estimated accretion rates are of the order 10^-4 Msun/yr, sufficiently high to overcome the radiation pressure and form massive stars via disk-mediated accretion processes. The single-dish large-scale mm continuum cores fragment into several compact condensations at the higher spatial resolution of the PdBI which is expected due to the clustering in massive star formation. While single-dish data give a simplified picture of the source, sufficiently high spatial resolution resolves the structures into outflows resembling those of low-mass star-forming cores. We interpret this as further support for the hypothesis that massive stars do form via disk-accretion processes similar to low-mass stars.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, higher resolution version of images at http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~hbeuther/. A&A, accepte

The Gas Temperature of Starless Cores in Perseus

In this paper we study the determinants of starless core temperatures in the Perseus molecular cloud. We use NH3 (1,1) and (2,2) observations to derive core temperatures (T_kin) and data from the COMPLETE Survey of Star Forming Regions and the c2d Spitzer Legacy Survey for observations of the other core and molecular cloud properties. The kinetic temperature distribution probed by NH3 is in the fairly narrow range of 9 - 15 K. We find that cores within the clusters IC348 and NGC1333 are significantly warmer than "field" starless cores, and T_kin is higher within regions of larger extinction-derived column density. Starless cores in the field are warmer when they are closer to class O/I protostars, but this effect is not seen for those cores in clusters. For field starless cores, T_kin is higher in regions in which the 13CO linewidth and the 1.1mm flux from the core are larger, and T_kin is lower when the the peak column density within the core and average volume density of the core are larger. There is no correlation between T_kin and 13CO linewidth, 1.1mm flux, density or peak column density for those cores in clusters. The temperature of the cloud material along the line of sight to the core, as measured by CO or far-infrared emission from dust, is positively correlated with core temperature when considering the collection of cores in the field and in clusters, but this effect is not apparent when the two subsamples of cores are considered separately.Comment: Accepted to ApJ; 13 pages, including 3 tables and three figure