Psychedelic Therapy: Diplomatic Re-compositions of Life/Non-life, the Living and the Dead
The Movement for Global Mental Health April 23, 2021 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1017/9789048550135.006 via Semantic Scholar
Summary
An ethnography of a psychosomatic department in a German hospital contrasts the global mental health movement's focus on the Global South with German psychosomatic medicine. The chapter questions why mental health in the Global South centers on psycho-pharmaceuticals and a dichotomy between superstition and science, while German psychosomatic medicine avoids such drugs and often fuses spiritual practices with medical treatment, highlighting cultural differences in mental health approaches.
Study at a glance
| Design | ethnography |
|---|---|
| Population | psychosomatic department in a German hospital |
| Key finding | The chapter argues that global mental health's preoccupation with the Global South relies on a distinction between superstition and science, whereas German psychosomatic medicine integrates spiritual elements and eschews psycho-pharmaceuticals, revealing cultural differences in mental health frameworks. |
Abstract
This chapter, which is an ethnography of a psychosomatic department in a German hospital, functions as a foil to the rest of the volume. It allows us to ask the following: Why is the movement for global mental health preoccupied with the Global South? Why does mental health in the Global South primarily revolve around the psycho-pharmaceutical, while psychosomatic medicine, which in the German context is a separate discipline divorced from psychiatry, is normatively built on eschewing psycho-pharmaceuticals? Why is mental health in the Global South built on the distinction between superstition (past lives, trance, possession – in short, ‘rituals’ invoking the spirits and the dead) and science (psychiatry, rational diagnosis, asylums, drugs), while in Germany the two are often fused?