Welcome to Development in Practice

Volume 9, Number 3

• Editorial
  • Editorial (3)
    Eade, Deborah
• Articles
  • The margins awake: building a `civil' society in the Third World
    Kothari, Smitu
  • Empowerment for development: taking participatory appraisal further in rural South Africa
    Motteux, Nicole; Binns, Tony; Nel, Etienne; Rowntree, Kate
  • Changing gender relations: methodological challenges for gender planning
    Locke, Catherine; Okali, Christine
  • Responding to mental distress in the Third World: cultural imperialism or the struggle for synthesis?
    Gilbert, Jane
  • Changing aid patterns in Southern Africa
    Love, Roy
• Viewpoint
  • Health for All by the Year 2000: what about the nomads?
    Omar, Abu Mayeh; Muhiadin Omar, Maymuna
  • Security of tenure, development victims, and the limits of environmental impact assessment in Zimbabwe's communal lands
    Mbiba, Beacon
  • Hurricane Mitch and human rights
    Russell, Grahame
  • Letter from Honduras, 5 November 1998
    Aguilar, Lourdes
• Practical Notes
  • Empowering rural women's groups for strengthening economic linkages: some Indian experiments
    Rajagopal
  • `Linking' and `Empowering': key concepts for intervention following war and disaster
    Higson-Smith, Craig
  • Community-based animal health care in Zambia
    Bainbridge, Timothy
• Conference Report
  • Hazards, globalisation, and sustainability
    Handmer, John; Wisner, Ben
• Book Reviews

Responding to mental distress in the Third World: cultural imperialism or the struggle for synthesis?

Gilbert, Jane

This paper questions the appropriateness of some of the 'help' that has been given in mental health in 'developing' countries, particularly Africa, and examines some of the complex ideological issues underlying different cultural understandings of the aetiology and treatment of mental illness. Some personal experiences, illustrating examples of the imposition of culturally inappropriate ideology in the teaching of psychiatry, are described. In conclusion, some principles of good practice are suggested which could form the basis of a synthesis between cultures, and maximise the possibility of Western aid in the field of mental distress being more culturally appropriate.

This article is freely available as a chapter in Development and Culture.

Keywords: Aid; Social sector

   

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