Question

What are some evaluative comments about Ethnopsychiatric systems, culture, emotion and mental health?

Answer 1

Ans) Ethnopsychiatry deals with the study of mental illnesses in cross-cultural perspective including its definition, classification, causality and treatment of mentally ill persons in differing contexts.

- It describes the evolution of ethnopsychiatry, explaining the meanings of normal and abnormal in terms of mental health, the concepts about mental illnesses in various cultures, the socio-cultural influences, treatment issues and shamanism. The emphasis is on understanding the cross-cultural issues in order to understand the mental illness in its diverse perspective.

- It also attempts to examine the possibility of collaboration between psychiatrists and shamans in the local context.

Lashari comments: "Some 'genetic counseling' may be needed to ensure a healthy offspring from a marriage of two systems, to avoid hostility and misunderstanding between the partners'.

- He recommends that traditional healers should undergo training in the basic principles of scientific medicine for at least eighteen to twenty-four months before they can join the health team; and that they should then be helped to adhere to a proper code of ethics.

- In Pakistan, like in any other developing country, the faith healers flourish and have reportedly caused harm in a number of cases, therefore it is important to monitor their activities with appropriate law enforcement.

- Also it is an attempt to gain insight into different cross-cultural issues in terms of aetiology, causation and management, to understand the diverse mental health especially in the ethnopsychiatric perspective.