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Rights as relationships : collaborating with faith healers in community mental health in Ghana
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Read, Ursula M. (2019) Rights as relationships : collaborating with faith healers in community mental health in Ghana. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 43 (4). pp. 613-635. doi:10.1007/s11013-019-09648-3 ISSN 0165-005X.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11013-019-09648-3
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.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Medicine > Warwick Medical School > Health Sciences Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Medicine > Warwick Medical School > Health Sciences > Mental Health and Wellbeing Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Medicine > Warwick Medical School |
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| Journal or Publication Title: | Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Springer | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0165-005X | ||||||||
| Official Date: | December 2019 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 43 | ||||||||
| Number: | 4 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 613-635 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11013-019-09648-3 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||
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