Rights as Relationships: Collaborating with Faith Healers in Community Mental Health in Ghana

Abstract

This paper explores the ways in which mental health workers think through the ethics of working with traditional and faith healers in Ghana. Despite reforms along the lines advocated by global mental health, including rights-based legislation and the expansion of community-based mental health care, such healers remain popular resources for treatment and mechanical restraint and other forms of coercion commonplace. As recommended in global mental health policy, mental health workers are urged to form collaborations with healers to prevent human rights abuses and promote psychiatric alternatives for treatment. However, precisely how such collaborations might be established is seldom described. This paper draws on ethnographic research to investigate how mental health workers approach working with healers and the moral imagination which informs their relationship. Through an analysis of trainee mental health workers’ encounters with a Prophet and his patients, the paper reveals how mental health workers attempt to negotiate the tensions between their professional duty of care, their Christian faith, and the authority of healers. I argue that, rather than enforcing legal prohibitions, mental health workers seek to avoid confrontation and manouver within existing hierarchies, thereby preserving sentiments of obligation and reciprocity within a shared moral landscape and established forms of sociality.

Role of Faith healers: A barrier or a support system to medical care- a cross sectional studyRole of faith healers: A barrier or a support system to medical care, a cross sectional study

“…According to a recent article by Read U M, mental health workers in Ghana are expected to collaborate with traditional and faith healers sensitizing them with community engagement efforts along with education on the signs and symptoms of disease and guiding them where to seek treatment. [ 37 ]…”

Masculine norms and mental health of African men: what can psychology do?

“…For instance, depression among blacks was considered a sign of emotional weakness, and those who exhibit helplessness, worthlessness, or hopelessness which are core symptoms of depression are considered cowards ( Alang, 2016 ; Campbell, 2017 ; Odimegwu and Okemgbo, 2008 ; Van Heerden et al., 2015 ). Most Africans are likely not to report their mental health symptoms or seek professional help and are more likely to seek religious help when faced with mental health problems without guilt or self-blame ( Cox, 1983 ; Read, 2019 ).…”

Global Mental Health: Interdisciplinary challenges for a field in motion

“…The second special issue in 2016 offered further counterpoint to the public health oriented GMH approach through ethnographic accounts highlighting the cultural specificity of mental health in context (Ecks, 2016; Jain & Orr, 2016). Efforts to harness social science insights to critique and refine GMH practice have led to important edited volumes (Kohrt & Mendenhall, 2015; White, Jain, Orr, & Read, 2017) and a thematic issue of Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry (Lovell, Read & Lang, 2019) that takes the field itself as its empirical object, and analyses the history of its institutions (Henckes, 2019; Lovell, et al., 2019), its interventions as they unfold (Bemme, 2019; Kienzler, 2019; Read, 2019), and the sometimes paradoxical effects of public mental health surveillance (Béhague, 2019; Lang, 2019).…”

“…When tensions between different technical and moral regimes of care do occur, however, especially when they involve physical restraint and human rights abuses, they are often borne by lay mental health workers (Read, 2019). As Read shows, despite recent rights-based mental health reforms in Ghana, in practice community health workers avoid the confrontation with faith-based healers in prayer camps where physical restraint occurs.…”