Contributions of traditional knowledge to mental health

Abstract

Researches of the World Health Organization to evaluate the clinical evolution of mental disorders - including diagnosis, treatment and prognosis - since the 70s shows that different social contexts determine different clinical outcomes. Differently from the mental disorder classification and treatment model, in force in the technicist and hyper-industrialized Western culture, the approach to the same phenomenon among people of traditional cultures takes place in a way that does not segregate or isolate the individual from his group, while promoting acceptance of his suffering. To illustrate such practices, we present the approach to mental suffering in three different traditions: Nigerian Yoruba, Umbanda and Kardecist Spiritism. We conclude that the care received by the individual based on the cultural framework of each of the different traditions allowed the resignification of events that had became unbearable and enabled the reordering of disaggregating psychic tendencies, corroborating the position adopted by the World Health Organization, which considers the care given to the mental disorder as crucial to the prognosis of the disease itself.

DOI:https://doi.org/10.56238/sevened2023.007-049