Browsing by Subject "Healing"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Child mental health in Sierra Leone: a survey and exploratory qualitative study
    (2016) Yoder, Hélène N C; Tol, Wietse A; Reis, Ria; de Jong, Joop T V M
    Abstract Background This study complements the growing amount of research on the psychosocial impact of war on children in Sierra Leone by examining local perceptions of child mental health, formal and informal care systems, help-seeking behaviour and stigma. Methods The study combined: (1) a nationwide survey of mental health care providers, with (2) exploratory qualitative research among service users and providers and other stakeholders concerned with child and adolescent mental health, with a particular emphasis on local explanations and stigma. Results Formal mental health care services are extremely limited resulting in an estimated treatment gap of over 99.8 %. Local explanations of child mental health problems in Sierra Leone are commonly spiritual or supernatural in nature, and associated with help-seeking from traditional healers or religious institutions. There is a considerable amount of stigma related to mental disorders, which affects children, their caregivers and service providers, and may lead to discrimination and abuse. Conclusions Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMH) care development in Sierra Leone should cater to the long-term structural effects of war-violence and an Ebola epidemic. Priorities for development include: (1) the strengthening of legal structures and the development of relevant policies that strengthen the health system and specifically include children and adolescents, (2) a clearer local distinction between children with psychiatric, neurological, developmental or psychosocial problems and subsequent channelling into appropriate services (3) supplementary CAMH training for a range of professionals working with children across various sectors, (4) specialist training in CAMH, (5) integration of CAMH care into primary health care, education and the social welfare system, (6) further research on local explanations of child mental disorders and the effect they have on the well-being of the child, and (7) a careful consideration of the role of religious healers as care providers.
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    Negotiating healing: understanding the dynamics amongst traditional healers in Kwazulu-Natal as they engage with professionalisation
    (Taylor & Francis, 2005) Devenish, Annie
    Traditional healing in South Africa is undergoing a process of change. Recognition of the role of traditional healers in health care, especially in the face of the HIV and AIDS pandemic, has led to government calls for professionalisation amongst this group. Traditional healers themselves have been increasingly experiencing a need to professionalise in order to gain more equal treatment in the public health sector and to secure access to state resources and support. In response to these developments, the government passed the Traditional Health Practitioners Act in 2004, which sets the parameters for official recognition of healers under the state. This paper focuses on the dynamics and politics amongst traditional health practitioners as they undergo this process of professionalisation, focusing on the KwaZulu-Natal Traditional Healers Council, the official body responsible for representing healers in the Province. It explores and analyses several key tensions amongst healers within and beyond the Council, showing how these tensions reveal particular power struggles over authority, as well as conflicting perspectives on the control and use of indigenous knowledge and the parameters of 'authentic' and 'appropriate' healing practice. The paper also looks at how the KwaZulu-Natal Council has attempted to mediate these tensions, emphasising that healers will have to find ways to resolve such conflicts in order for them to be able to come together and work on a common vision of professionalism.
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    Open Access
    The Ngoma Consciousness: IsiNgqi neSandi as existing and accessible tools for healing and therapy in Africa
    (2025) Koela, Nkosenathi; Ramugondo, Elelwani; Pather, Jayendran; Bam-Hutchison, June
    This thesis explores the ritual archive of isingqi (energy, rhythm and vibration) used in Ngoma (the divination arts and ecology) through ingoma (traditional sound and chants) as accessible tools for healing and therapy. Ngoma, etymologically, is a proto-Bantu term for an African praxis within which exists an ecology of related institutions such as the practice of medicine, divination, crafts, music, and ritual. Central in this thesis is the systemic dispossession and destruction of indigene ecologies of healing in South Africa as a result of coloniality, which De Sousa Santos (2015) unpacks through the framework of epistimicide and I unpack through the framework of ecolocide and musicolocide. The central question this thesis seeks to answer is: How is ritual involving isingqi used and preserved in the divination arts of/through ingoma (traditional sound and chants)? The overall objective is to unpack and explore this African (Ngoma) philosophical praxis and its related ecology of knowledge, through the applied method of ritual music as vibrations of healing in Southern Africa, and to offer an informed and decolonial use of ritual technologies such as ingoma and isingqi. To do this, I draw from inter-disciplinary research and archival literature that explores various epistemologies and uses of sound in African indigene communities. I also use the existing ritual archive of Ngoma and its modalities through a co-operative co-design method. The practical elements of my research provide a repository within which to explore some of the possibilities of Ngoma as consciousness, an ecology of divination arts, and praxis in the current context. This thesis argues that African indigenous scholars must engage deeply with African epistemologies like Ngoma to develop authentic technologies and healing modalities that can enrich South Africa's cultural and healing ecology. Doing so may help reinstate African- conscious institutions of healing in various sectors of society and introduce hybrid forms of sound therapy and psychosomatic treatments, involving unique healing methods through Ngoma rhythmic manipulation. My findings argue for a clear distinction between performance studies and indigene ritual studies. This distinction can provide a platform for interdisciplinary models of scholarship that enrich indigene knowledge systems and encourage research into African healing praxes.