Psychedelic Therapy: Diplomatic Re-compositions of Life/Non-life, the Living and the Dead
The Movement for Global Mental Health April 23, 2021 Harish Naraindas 1 citation
An 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.