The Culture of Mental Illness and Psychiatric Practice in Africa

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Journal of Mental Health
ISSN: 0963-8237 (Print) 1360-0567 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ijmh20
The Culture of Mental Illness and Psychiatric
Practice in Africa
Oyenike Balogun-Mwangi
To cite this article: Oyenike Balogun-Mwangi (2018) The Culture of Mental Illness and Psychiatric
Practice in Africa, Journal of Mental Health, 27:1, 93-93, DOI: 10.1080/09638237.2017.1417576
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09638237.2017.1417576
Published online: 18 Dec 2017.
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http://tandfonline.com/ijmh
ISSN: 0963-8237 (print), 1360-0567 (electronic)
J Ment Health, 2018; 27(1): 93
ß2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. DOI: 10.1080/09638237.2017.1417576
BOOK REVIEW
The Culture of Mental Illness and Psychiatric Practice in Africa
The Culture of Mental Illness and Psychiatric Practice in
Africa, edited by Emmanuel Akyeampong, Allan G. Hill and
Arthur Kleinman, Bloomington, Indiana University Press,
2016, 362pp., $80 hdbk, ISBN: 978-0-25301286-9
Written with an interdisciplinary lens and giving credence
to historical, social and cultural contexts, this book examines
the practice of psychiatry in Africa. While the editors caution
that the book is not meant to be an exhaustive analysis on the
practice of psychiatry in sub-Saharan Africa, this thirteen-
chapter book does indicate a sincere effort to capture complex
facets of culture, mental illness and psychiatric practice.
The central argument threading throughout the book is that
global health policy and subsequent interventions have
prioritized infectious disease (e.g. HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis,
malaria) over the reverberating and measurable impact of
mental illness in Africa. Essentially, the cumulative power of
this book is in highlighting the ways in which the current
realities of mental health in Africa are a criticism of
psychiatry and psychology practice on the continent.
Importantly, the authors do not ignore the historic evidence
of an emerging, pluralistic African psychiatry that, if not
interrupted by post-colonial political and economic crises,
may have blossomed to inform and influence the global
practice of psychiatry.
The interdisciplinary goals of the book are clearly reflected
in the biographies of the editors (as well as the 23 other
authors who contributed to this volume). Emmanuel
Akyeampong is a Professor of History at Harvard
University whose research includes histories of disease and
medicine. Allan G. Hill is a demographer and Professor
of Population and International Health at the University of
Southampton. Dr. Hill took part in a longitudinal study of
women’s mental health in Accra, Ghana. Arthur Kleinman is
a psychiatrist and medical anthropologist in the Department
of Social Medicine at Harvard who has authored numerous
publications on mental illness and psychiatry in non-Western
contexts.
This book is effective in its aims to use psychiatry and
mental health to highlight the worldviews, lifestyles, and
social processes that are unique to populations of African
peoples as well as to examine current barriers to mental health
care. One way in which the book meets this aim is by using
specific cases and geopolitical contexts to illustrate issues that
may apply broadly to the continent. For example, Elialilia
Okello and Seggane Musisi (Chapter 10) draw from their
work in Uganda to examine the infrastructure of psychiatric
treatment in Africa and the need for an integrated approach
that includes traditional healing practices.
As an African psychologist trained in the United States, I
am pressed to consider the translational value of my skill set.
Africa continues to limp forward as she negotiates historical
and present-day economic and political crises that have
decimated health delivery infrastructure across the continent.
This generation of African mental health providers will, like
me, be inspired to read about Thomas Lambo, who in the
early postcolonial African years, was the first in a generation
of African psychiatrists to integrate psychotherapy and
psychotropic medications with indigenous healing practices
in treating mental illness. This book is recommended reading
for any professional who desires to understand the ways in
which politics, economics, institutions, and culture converge
in the provision of mental health care, especially in low-
income contexts.
Oyenike Balogun-Mwangi
Boston University Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation,
Boston, MA, USA
Email: oyenike@bu.edu
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