Week 3 - Shannon Trinh

The views of the Dagara people shed a more positive light on mental health issues. Interestingly, an individual suffering from a mental health disorder that is being treated in a Western hospital is viewed as a prisoner who is being restricted from their potential as a healer. People who are chosen to be a communicator between the two worlds are considered special: “So this is how the healers who are attempting to be born are treated in this culture. What a loss! What a loss that a person who is finally being aligned with a power from the other world is just being wasted” (2). What was surprising to me was that those who are also touched by spirits are offered great amounts of support and community, in contrast to the Western world, where those who are stricken with mental health disorders are viewed as burdens and dangers to society: “In the Dagara tradition, the community helps the person reconcile the energies of both worlds – “the world of the spirit that he or she is merged with, and the village and community” (3). There is some sort of connectivity and spirituality that binds these individuals together – the whole group is affected by these spirits and by the other world.

There is also this idea of sharing spirituality or even consciousness with other beings or objects on this earth: “In the case of mountains, as an example to explain the phenomenon, “it’s a spirit of the mountain that is walking side by side with the person and, as a result, creating a time-space distortion that is affecting the person caught in it” (6). This can go back to our class discussion about a universal and shared soul – that all of our energies are received from one source, our universe, and that it is possible to connect our souls together and exhibit certain aspects of this one shared soul. This can also emphasize the importance of not only being in balance with beings from the other world, but also finding balance among those around us.

Finally, this quote from the reading really made me think: “Taking a sacred ritual approach to mental illness rather than regarding the person as a pathological case gives the person affected – and indeed the community at large – the opportunity to begin looking at it from that vantage point too” (7). As a society, we automatically label mental health disorders as damaging, wrong, abnormal, and overall negative. Maybe if we took a different, lighter perspective on certain behaviors in certain individuals, our communities and world would be better for it. Like the Dagara people, we would be able to support others in their struggles without perpetuating cycles of oppression and marginalization.

Question: How can we integrate effective rituals in the Western world? How can we promote the importance of rituals in a way that Westerners would want to understand?

Works Cited: Stephanie Marohn, Malidoma Patrice Somè: “What a Shaman Sees in a Mental Hospital”