Dr Anjali Chhabria : Modafinil is not harmful, but no psychiatric medicine can be sold over the counter

The morning has begun on a sensational note with Rhea Chakraborthy’s interview to a TV channel, where she has claimed that actor Sushant Singh Rajput, her boyfriend, had been consuming a medicine called Modafinil since 2013. She claimed that he had admitted to her prior to their Europe trip that he had had a depression bout in 2013 and had visited a well-known psychiatrist for it, who had prescribed Modafinil for controlling his claustrophobia. She has said that he would have it before flights.

We spoke to Dr Anjali Chhabria, a leading psychiatrist from Mumbai, who has attended to cases in Bollywood in the course of her decades-long career. “Modafinil is a medicine prescribed to increase alertness. It’s not a harmful medicine but no psychiatric medicine can or should be sold over the counter without a prescription. This medicine is given to patients who complain about not being able to pay attention or about drowsiness. It’s to increase a person’s alertness. Psychiatric medication should not be given over the counter because people first need to visit a psychiatrist to understand why they are feeling a certain way. There is nothing harmful about this medicine, but it’s not something that can be given to anyone without a doctor prescribing it to them. It needs to be supervised by a doctor in the period that it is administered. People should not self-medicate,” Dr Chhabria told us.