Spirits, devils and trauma in Uganda - ASC Research Seminar (Second in a series of four on health issues in Africa)

Marjolein van Duijl is a psychiatrist and has worked as the coordinator of mental health care services for asylum seekers in a regional mental health centre in the Netherlands since 2000. Prior to this she was head of the Department of Psychiatry at Mbarara University in Uganda where she conducted extensive research on associations between spirit possession, dissociation and people’s traumatic experiences in southwest Uganda. She is currently working on a PhD on dissociation in Uganda and is also a board member of the Transcultural Psychiatry Section within the Netherlands Psychiatric Association. Her forthcoming publications include ‘Dissociative Symptoms and Reported Trauma among Patients with Spirit Possession and Matched Healthy Controls in Uganda’.

There is little systematic research on the cross-cultural validity of internationally accepted standard classification and concepts of mental disorders caused by traumatic experiences. One of the current controversies in the literature concerns the relevance of standard classification and concepts in non-western countries. Marjolein van Duijl will present the results of a field study in southwest Uganda in which she investigated the correlation between standard classification, concepts and explanatory models of mental diseases in relation to traumatic events and people’s local concepts and experiences. The different explanatory models and interventions used by health workers, medical students, traditional healers, religious leaders, counsellors and people in the community will be compared. The content and contribution of these different explanatory models and treatments will be related to the context of a country known to have suffered from multiple traumatic events, the disruption of societal structures and limited financial resources.