Page 13 - NAMAH-Jan-2017

Namah Cultural U-turns in understanding mental health
for intense experiences and the transitional
use of old pathology labels. Mental health
and spiritual experiences are on a continuum, the American public were misled about the
and I have acknowledged trauma triggers
and new treatment options. I have explored
potential evidence about a normal range of
altered states of consciousness, achieved
spontaneously and by specialists. I end by
suggesting a variety of ways forward, which
acknowledge new paradigm thinking for
societal benefit.
Old-fashioned assumptions
As more psychiatrists become aware of
ethical dilemmas facing their profession,
they emphasise the importance of social
context for understanding distress, rather
than biological origins. Evidence against
old-fashioned psychiatry and reductionist
Western medicine is growing from within
the profession, and general physicians,
psychiatrists and psychologists are seeking
new ways of understanding.
Challenges are being raised which question
biological causes of ‘mental illness’ in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM),
the theory of chemical imbalances and the
efficacy and benefits of medication. The
British psychiatrist, Moncrieff questioned
whether psychiatric drugs targeted underlying differences are of little importance, and view
diseases and she claimed drugs did not
correct chemical imbalances (1). The social
anthropologist, James Davies showed how
scientific research was manipulated. He
interviewed the originators of the DSM and
discovered that it was created by discussion
and without reference to scientific evidence
(2).
In the USA, others investigated how pharma- • culturally new migrants, refugees and
ceutical companies had corrupted the American
Psychiatric Association and documented how
biology of mental disorders, the validity of
diagnoses, and the efficacy of psychiatric
drugs (3). In late 2016, a conference was
held in Gothenburg, Sweden on the risks
and alternatives to pharmaceuticals (4),
where speakers included psychiatrists and
psychologists.
The problem lies within the education
system in medical schools, whereby students
are taught about the biological origin
of mental diseases in the brain and the
pharmaceutical drugs used to treat them.
They learn about the predispositions of
different ethnic groups towards psychosis
(in a rather racist educational system). This
teaching also ignores patients’ psycho-social
histories of trauma, oppression, repression
and suppression. In those days diagnosis
depended on the beliefs of the observer (5, 6).
In some parts of the West, the practice of
medicine does not require any knowledge of
religion or spirituality. Apart from general
physicians, specialist medical doctors focus
on increasingly narrow aspects of the body.
Furthermore, cultural blindness may exist,
whereby professionals may believe cultural
everyone through Western spectacles.
The new ways
In the West, several groups of people have
expressed dissatisfaction with the current
model of mental health diagnosis and
treatment. These are:
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