“When I started my practice,” Laxmikant Rathi said, “I was the only Psychiatrist in the town — now the number has grown to 15. A common man now knows what stress, anxiety, and depression are all about and actively seeks a Psychiatrist’s help — a huge departure from the culture that prevailed in the 1980s.”
He arrived in Amravati in February 1982 with a DPM and MD from GS Medical College and KEM Hospital, Mumbai, and opened his practice. He was 26. He was the first psychiatrist the city had. The hospital he built, named after his father Shri Gowardhandasji Rathi, carries 25 beds and serves a population that has, across four decades, slowly and haltingly come to accept that the mind needs the same care as the body.
The Education
Laxmikant was born in Raipur into a business family and grew up in Amravati, attending Manibai Gujarati High School and then Vidarbha Mahavidyalaya for his premed year. He entered Government Medical College, Nagpur in 1973. After graduation, he interned at Kondhali primary health centre with Nandkishor Chandak, Omprakash Bohra, Nandkishor Taori, and Harish Baheti, and completed his urban posting at the Civil Hospital, Amravati.
He had badly wanted to do postgraduation in Medicine or Paediatrics. Neither opened for him. In Mumbai, working through house jobs at Cooper Hospital — one in Medicine, one in Psychiatry — something shifted. He developed, as he described it, a deep interest. He enrolled at Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital, earned his DPM and then his MD in Psychological Medicine, writing his thesis on the psychiatric aspects of colostomy under Dr JS Apte.
The Amravati Career
Over four decades, the clinical practice grew alongside an administrative and civic life of unusual breadth. He served as district governor of Lions Club International in 2007–08, as Council Chairman Chief covering Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh — nearly 6,000 Lions working under him. He was Founder President of the Vidarbha and Amravati Psychiatrist Associations, President of the Indian Psychiatric Society (Western Zone), and President of the Amravati branch of the Indian Medical Association. On 1 July 2010, President Pratibha Patil honoured him at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Delhi.
In 1993, he began writing poetry. On the seventh day after his father’s death, he wrote “Babuji O Babuji,” and has not stopped since. Close to 80 poems have accumulated, all unpublished, covering everything that touches him. He is invited across Vidarbha to recite his poems and ghazals.
“I often tell my patients,” he said, “that I cannot imagine your anxiety, stress, or worry — and therefore cannot show you how they impact your life and thoughts. But I can help you lead a better and happier life by fixing the very chemicals in your brain that are creating havoc with your mind and body.