Raymond Trinh Week 5

In What a Shaman Sees in a Mental Hospital, the authors Stephanie Marohn and Malidoma Patrice Some provide the different perspectives of how different cultures view mental illness. For example, what those in the West view as mental illness, the Dagara people regard as “good news from the other world”. Marohn and Some states “mental disorder, behavioral disorder of all kinds, signal the fact that two obviously incompatible energies have merged into the same field” (2). The person going through the crisis has been chosen as a medium for a message to the community that needs to be communicated from the spirit realm. These disturbances result when the person does not get assistance in dealing with the presence of the energy from the spirit realm. Those who develop so-called mental disorders are those who are sensitive, which is viewed in Western culture as oversensitivity. However, in Indigenous cultures don’t see it that way and sensitive people don’t experience themselves as overly sensitive. The bombardment of the senses and the violent energy that characterizes Western culture can overwhelm sensitive people. Although research has gone far to understand the impact of the disease, it has only recently begun to explain stigma in mental illness. Much work yet needs to be done to fully understand the breadth and scope of prejudice against people with mental illness.

How can we overcome the stigma of mental illness?