African psychotherapy: Some psychotherapeutic techniques

MENA Dubai 2003 Abstract

Author Erhabor Sunday Idemudia
Copy The various branches of the social Sciences, including psychology, understand that neither health nor ill health occur randomly within populations. Both are rooted in social processes such as the pattern of social interactions between individuals, groups or nations and people's reactions to and perceptions of their social, physical environments. There are also the overarching systems of values and norms, which help perpetuate patterns of mental health.

According to Blue and Gains (1992), cultures develop treatment models that reflect their own values. Unfortunately, most research literature originates in western cultures producing an ethnocentric view of psychopathology that can limit our understanding of disorders in general and can also limit and restrict the way we approach treatment in Africa. The result is that African psychologists are being distracted and diverted from questions of the moment in their native communities. This has explained several omissions in the quest for African psychotherapy.

In this paper, the ways in which culture affects psychosocial health positively, negatively and recovery from the African perspective will be reviewed within the framework of the links between indigenous theories of conflicts/stress, solidarity and breakdown. Also, the debate on how to adapt western psychotherapy to African settings is a contentious one. Embedded in this debate are modes of incorporation. The big questions are: What model(s) are we using in Africa in the treatment of psychological problems? To what extent is African psychology evolved? What techniques are being utilized in African settings? This paper intends to demonstrate how cultural stresses express themselves in African patients with emphasis on Nigerian patients. The paper will also attempt to bring some coherence to a series of observations made by people knowledgeable about the conditions of health and disease in Africa from a-mind-body perspective and finally the paper also will deal with three newly evolving psychotherapeutic techniques in sub-Saharan Africa.