Title

The Culture of Mental Illness and Psychiatric Practice in Africa

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Title

Africa Today

Publication Date

2015

Date Added

2022-05-23

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In The Culture of Mental Illness and Psychiatric Practice in Africa, Emmanuel Akyeampong, Allan G. Hill, and Arthur Kleinman, as well as the contributors to this undertaking, shed light on mental illness in Africa and the way interventions are handled by psychiatric institutions and experts, including physicians and nurses. All the volume's chapters, which study treatments used to deal with common and chronic mental disorders, have been well researched and well written. Apart from the book's thirteen main chapters, the editors provide an enlightening introduction, detailing the origin of the publication "in a working group at Harvard University on 'Health, Healing, and Ritual Practice'" (p. 1). The group itself is part of an interdisciplinary and interschool research project of the Committee on African Studies known as the Africa Initiative: "The volume thus emerged out of conversations between a psychiatrist and non-psychiatrists about the history, culture, and practice of psychiatry in Africa" (p. 1). The editors here discuss such thematic topics as "Social Change and Mental Health in Africa, 1930s-1960s" and "Economic Decline and Political Instability in Independent...

Keywords

Health

Disciplines

Criminology

Publisher

Indiana University Press

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