Research on help-seeking for mental illness in Africa

Dominant approaches and possible alternatives

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2395085
AutoresCooper (0000-0001-9894-236X, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, autor correspondente), Sara Cooper (0000-0001-9473-8636, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)
Ano2016
Volume53
Fascículo6
Páginas696-718
Data de publicação2016-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoTranscultural Psychiatry (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1363-4615 • E-ISSN: 1461-7471
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1363461515622762
PMID26759416
OpenAlexW2236378770
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas22
Referências citadas74

There is growing concern within the global mental health arena that interventions currently being executed to scale up mental health services in Africa will be ineffective unless simultaneous steps are taken to address people's help-seeking behaviour. Drawing upon two conceptual tools arising from science and technology studies (STS), those of a "classification system" and "the black box," this paper looks critically at discursive constructions of help-seeking in Africa within mental health research over the last decade. Research in this area can be divided into two dominant traditions: the knowledge-belief-practice survey and indigenous-knowledge-system approaches. Although the content and value-codes between these approaches differ, structurally they are very similar. Both are mediated by the same kind of system of classification, which demarcates the world into homogenous entities and binary oppositions. This system of ordering is one of the most stubborn and powerful forms of classification buried in the "black box" of the modernist/colonial knowledge archive and is fraught with many questionable Eurocentric epistemological assumptions. I consider whether there might be other ways of understanding help-seeking for mental illness in Africa and discuss two studies that illustrate such alternative approaches. In conclusion, I discuss some of the challenges this alternative kind of research faces in gaining more influence within contemporary global mental health discourse and practice

Binary opposition · Colonialism · Epistemology · Global mental health · Indigenous · Mental health · Mental illness · Political science · Psychiatry · Psychological intervention · Sociology · Community Health and Development · Computer Science · Law · Mental Health and Patient Involvement · Mental Health Treatment and Access · Psychology · Ecology