Week 3-Uyen Ngo

Week 3
Uyen Ngo

As I have mentioned before, I find it difficult to choose between the side of medicine or spiritual healings as both have played a big part in my upbringing and values. However, in this weeks article, I found that I found in many ways, a shaman's view on mental illness aligns with mine. Western medicine tend to view mental illness as a negative thing, something standing in the way of one's personal development. There's a problem with the default treatment of being stuck into a "mental hospital and [being] given a lot of drugs" (4). And while my personal view is that I think medication is important to treatment, I think the problem is Western culture refuses to open up to other interpretations of the condition. In some ways, a lot of people who have mental illness are gifted with creativity and the ability to see the world in a different light, as the shamans do.

 Instead of opening up the option that those suffering from mental disorders such as Schizophrenia could just be someone who sees the world in a different way, western medicine has decided to paint them as victims and in the negative connotation of "crazy". It is important that as western medicine is developing, we start to acknowledge that there could well be alternative explanations to these disorders. It made me think of our guest speakers and how for some time, she was told that she was crazy or of the OA and how as a child, she was just given tons of medication as that is often what happens in psychiatry. We have to remember that at some point, even mental illness was not talked about, and in some ways, it is still for many cultures. However, as a part of a world that is becoming more acknowledging for mental illness, we have to pay the same respects to other views and open up to the possibility that there are even more alternative explanations, such as the birth of a shaman. 

Works Cited

"What a Shaman Sees in a Mental Hospital"