Andrea Gomez - Week 5

Reading the perspective of someone outside of western medicine was very interesting for me. There are some indigenous practices that I have been raised in, but my mother is a nurse and so I am more familiar with western practices. However, the idea that mental illness is a result of spirits or messages from the other side is a new concept for me. Looking at those who suffer from any mental illness, not as a blight or problem for society, but a way for it to fix itself. Thinking about people that way, that they are still apart of your community and an integral part in its survival, is a much better way of treating them I believe.

There is a stigma on mental illness and those who have them, even their treatments in Western society. People who have them are often labeled, heavily medicated, and treated differently by others. To say that these people are in fact healers, messengers, and that they cannot be born by the way we treat them is an unusual way to look at the situation. Despite this I do agree that the treatment of these people needs to be improved. And perhaps they are healers, and they do have a message, but we'll never know because of the constant disregard we give them.