Week 3: Christina Lukban

Week 3

In this week's reading What a Shaman Sees in a Mental Hospital, we discuss the theme of the Mental Health Industrial Complex and clash of self through looking at our society's view on mental health in comparison to other cultures' views. In the Asian American culture, many people often invalidate mental health and either suppress these thoughts/feelings or view these people as "weak" or "overly sensitive." Having this stigma, it's often hard for people to seek for help when it comes to mental health, but this is what also adds on to how mental health is being "treated" in our society. In the section Alex: Crazy in the USA, Healer in Africa, it was said that Alex was given all this medication to help his hallucinations and depression but nothing seemed to work. Western culture has this idea to "fix" mental illnesses which usually involves the quick fix of prescribing a medicine, but is it truly effective? Our society views these illnesses as something that is wrong with people and needs to be stopped rather something we need to understand and embrace. We are so quick to negatively label people with their "diseases" but how is our culture practices truly affecting these people?

Having medication to try to suppress these "illnesses" or what shamans view as spiritual energies or emergence of healers, it is believed that it is actually worsening our mental health because we are just longing for that spiritual connection and trying to stop/delay what these people are destined to be, healers. I found this section very interesting because it really puts into perspective how effective different types of healing works for different people. Medication may be good when it comes to short-term physical treatment of the body, but when it comes to the holistic view of someone's long-term health we must look at their overall mental and spiritual health as well.

Link: https://upliftconnect.com/shamanic-view-of-mental-health/