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Publications (31)
Global mental health [GMH] scholarship and practice has typically focused on the unmet needs and barriers to mental health in communities, developing biomedical and psychosocial interventions for integration into formal health care platforms in response. In this article, we analyse four diverse settings to disrupt the emphasises on health system we...
The practices of traditional and faith-based healers in low- and middle-income countries in Africa and elsewhere have come under intense scrutiny in recent years owing to allegations of human rights abuses. To mitigate these, there have been calls to develop collaborations between healers and formal health services to optimise available mental heal...
Purpose
This paper aims to provide new insights into and offer potential solutions to the challenges encountered by mental health services working with remote, rural or underserved communities in the UK.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, the authors reflect on the utility of integrating conventional clinical approaches, with preventive ca...
This study explored lay concepts about and attributions of mental illness in a Ga community in southern Ghana. The study’s sample consisted of 11 Ga men and 12 Ga women, ranging in age from 30-81. Participants completed one-on-one interviews. Participants ascribed to polyphasic attributions of mental illness including biomedical and spiritual expla...
COVID-19 research has relied heavily on convenience-based samples, which—though often necessary—are susceptible to important sampling biases. We begin with a theoretical overview and introduction to the dynamics that underlie sampling bias. We then empirically examine sampling bias in online COVID-19 surveys and evaluate the degree to which common...
Background:
Antimicrobial resistance is a global problem driven by the overuse of antibiotics. Dentists are responsible for about 10% of antibiotics usage across healthcare worldwide. Factors influencing dental antibiotic prescribing are numerous, with some differences in low- and middle-income countries compared with high-income countries. This s...
Religion is seen to have both positive and negative impacts on the individual and the society. The present study sought to investigate the impact of neo-prophetic Christianity on the members of neo-prophetic churches in Ghana. Eighty-six congregants of six neo-prophetic churches in Accra and Kumasi were sampled for this study. Methods used in the g...
The widespread use of faith-based and traditional healing for mental disorders within African contexts is well known. However, normative responses tend to fall within two camps: on one hand, those oriented towards the biomedical model of psychiatry stress the abuses and superstition of such healing, whilst critics adopting a more ‘local’ perspectiv...
There has been a surge in the growth of neo-Pentecostal churches in the Ghanaian context. These churches broadcast their activities through television and are able to reach many people and have mass followers. Their main activities are miracles, healing, prophecies, and teaching. Although studies have been conducted on their activities, little is k...
Contemporary Christianity in Africa has seen an increase in Pentecostalism/ Charismatism, whose activities include performing miracles, prophecies and exorcism. Although it is acknowledged that the charismatic movement has its roots in
Pentecostalism, clear differences can be identified between Pentecostalism and Charismatism. Given this distinctio...
Background: Health seeking in many African countries typically involves making use of multiple healing systems, including indigenous and faith systems, as well as biomedical healthcare systems. These different systems have co-existed for many years in Africa, including in Ghana.
Aim: In this article, we examine the formalising processes that non-b...
Background: For many people in African countries, various forms of health care are utilised for the treatment of illness. This pluralistic nature of health seeking includes the use of indigenous, faith and allopathic medicines for care.
Aim: In this article, our aim was to gain insight into the existing knowledge on indigenous and faith healing in...
Traditional and faith healing is a common practice in many low- and middle-income countries due to resource limitations and belief systems, particularly for disorders such as mental disorders. We report on the beliefs about mental illness from the perspective of one category of alternative healers in Ghana-the Muslim faith healers. We also report o...
The present study explored perceived causes of, and preferred treatment approach for, mental illness among congregants of six Neo-prophetic churches in Accra and Kumasi through in-depth interviews. Using thematic analysis, five themes emerged from participants’ causal attributions of mental illness. These included lifestyles and environmental stres...
The use of traditional medicine for the treatment of various disorders is not a new practice. Indeed, various categories of traditional healers form a large part of the healthcare workforce in many low- and middle-income countries, and given the paucity of mental health professionals in these countries, traditional and complementary medicine practi...
Background
In many low- and middle-income countries, faith healing is used alongside biomedical treatment for many health problems including mental disorders. Further, Christianity in Africa has seen much transformation in recent decades with the growth of charismatic or neo-prophetic churches whose doctrines include healing, miracles and prophecie...
Background
The use of traditional/alternative medicine for health care in Africa has been examined for various conditions. However, there is limited research about traditional/alternative health care for intellectual disability. The present authors explored the explanatory models (EMs) of intellectual disability held by traditional/faith healers in...
Epilepsy is the most common neurological condition in sub-Saharan Africa. A significant number of people with epilepsy in low- and middle-income countries do not receive formal biomedical care. They utilize the services of various traditional and alternative medicine practitioners. However, there is relatively little information about the beliefs a...
Traditional and alternative medicine is an integral part of the mental healthcare system of many African countries. The treatments and practices of these traditional and alternative healers will be influenced by their ideas about the causes and effects of mental disorders. With the concept of explanatory models of illness as a framework, we examine...
Background: Many current debates about global mental health have increasingly called for collaboration between biomedical and traditional medical health systems. Despite these calls, not much has been written about the variables that would influence such collaboration. To a large extent, collaboration dialogues have considered biomedicine on the on...
Background
Traditional healing methods are considered central to mental health care in low-income countries such as Ghana, because they are perceived to be more easily accessible, more affordable and generally ascribe similar causal beliefs to those of the patients. However, not much is known about the work of traditional healers largely because th...
Background:
One of the most successful modes of record-keeping and data collection is the use of health management information systems, where patient information and management plans are uniformly entered into a database to streamline the information and for ease of further patient management. For mental healthcare, a Mental Health Information Sys...
Many people like to identify as belonging to one church or another. Previous studies have explored the process of switching from one religious group to another, and this process has identified various factors that determine the likelihood and reasons for switching. Although this has been explored, little is known about the factors that influence sw...
In Ghana, many individuals employ traditional and faith healing for treating illnesses. Although attitudes and knowledge of laypeople on mental illness have been explored, little is known about Christians' knowledge and how the church influences such knowledge. The present study explored knowledge on definition, types and symptoms of mental illness...
Previous research has indicated the importance of embodiment in West African emotion lexica. The current study aims to explore the pervasiveness of this cultural script through the analysis of the emotional lexica of two West African languages (Ga and Ewe) from Southern Ghana that have been featured minimally in previous emotion research. The analy...
Ameka (2002), Dzokoto and Okazaki (2006) and Guerts (2002) have observed a preponderance of somatic references in the communication of emotion in several spoken Ghanaian languages. This suggests that embodiment features prominently in Ghanaian cultural scripts of emotions. Unfortunately, the structure of English-Ghana's official language due to its...