Psychedelic Therapy: Diplomatic Re-compositions of Life/Non-life, the Living and the Dead
The Movement for Global Mental Health April 23, 2021 DOI: 10.1017/9789048550135.006 via Semantic Scholar
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractAn ethnography of a psychosomatic department in a German hospital reveals a striking contrast with global mental health approaches in the Global South. In Germany, psychosomatic medicine is a distinct discipline that normatively avoids psycho-pharmaceuticals, whereas mental health in the Global South centers on them. The chapter questions why global mental health fixates on the Global South and why there mental health is framed through a dichotomy between superstition (rituals, spirits, trance) and science (psychiatry, drugs), while in Germany these categories often merge.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Ethnography Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Art Psychology Sociology |
| Citations | 1 |
| Key finding | Psychosomatic medicine in Germany eschews psycho-pharmaceuticals, contrasting with the pharmaceutical-centered mental health approach in the Global South, and the distinction between superstition and science is blurred in Germany but sharp in the Global South. |
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?