Week 3 - Suzanne Vue

In the article "What a Shaman Sees in A Mental Hospital - The Mind Unleashed", Stephanie Marohn interviews Malidoma Patrice Some about Shamanism; spiritual healing, and the Western way of treatment and healing. Dr. Some has been practicing spiritual healing with mental illness that when he came to study at a western country, he was shocked by the way their practices work. Dr. Some took a patient who was suffering from a cycle of severe depression to Africa. The western medicine and techniques where all used, but nothing worked. Dr. Some took this patient, Alex, to Africa and had to go through a shaman ritual to get him connected to the spiritual realm, because he was not a native born. Alex ended up staying there for four years.
Dr. Some beliefs that "mental illness" is connected to a being from another world. And that it's an "ancestral energy that has been placed in status, that finally is coming out in the person". He believed that mental illness can also help the western people rediscover the rituals. He believes that these ancestors “wants to merge with a descendant in an attempt to heal what they weren’t able to do while in their physical body”.

Is Dr. Some's rediscover idea something that the western countries should start to scientifically prove?  Is it something that can be proven, or is it more of the individual experience?

http://shamanism.astrologyclub.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/shaman.jpg