Week 3 - Tony Tran

In the article, “What a Shaman Sees in A Mental Hospital,” I agree with how we should begin considering mental disorders not always as an illness, but as a need for mental or spiritual fortification. How the article said it was that mental disorders are spiritual emergencies or spiritual crisis. Although I don’t think all solutions require a ritual, I also don’t agree that all of the problems should be resolved through drugs. I think many of these mental disorders can be fix through a change of social environment or a change in the type of social interaction. It is too often that society recognizes these “blights” and often try to stay away or not associate with them. All of these little nuisances contribute to the issue that cannot be simply fixed by pills.

So in this sense, the Dagara culture’s ritual indirectly accompanies those issues by associating the person in need with pleas from the spirit that is embraced by healers and people. Thus due to the simple difference in approach of a person’s problem, positive social interaction through healers vs medication, this could be another avenue of medicine and healing that needs consideration.

Random thought: We have that saying to “lift your spirits up”. Well, we perceive it as meaning to making yourself mentally happy/positive. Well maybe other people also perceive it as associating your mental/emotional condition to your own spirit.

In the article, “Combining Indian and Western Spiritual Psychology: Applications to Health and Social Renewal,” one thing that I acknowledged is that although our western society seems fixed than medicine is the proper way to get through illnesses and improve health, many third world societies do not have that luxury or money to be treated that way. For example, millions of people of the lower class part of the Indian caste cannot be treated by doctors. If they can, what about medicine expense? What about difference between education and knowledge that presents the social gap between two people? These are realistic reasons why many people are more inclined to seek mental and medical help through spiritual and religious healers because these are resources available and easy for the population to understand and believe in.

Question: Should mental therapists be required to learn about the patient’s cultural background and be knowledgeable (or find someone that is knowledgeable) in order to find an appropriate solution to a mental health problem? If most people have a religious or cultural background, why should contemporary medicine and doctors ignore something that could help or influence the patient’s health?

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