A new study published in the International Journal of Social Psychology finds that people in Ethiopia experience depression not as a medical disorder but as a state that is tied to the social, cultural, economic, and spiritual context around them.
In the research, led by Gojjam Limenih of Western University in London, participants commonly understood difficult life circumstances to be the cause of depression. These factors included extreme poverty, domestic violence, witnessing mass killings, and violent conflict. Many participants in the current research understood depression as a state of being trapped by life’s challenges. Participants also expressed an understanding of depression informed by Ethiopian spiritual beliefs and practices.
These findings call into question the biomedical approach of the global mental health movement (GMH) in treating depression in low and middle income countries. The narrow understanding of the disease model championed by the GMH may be incapable of addressing the complex circumstances that surround depression in places like Ethiopia. The authors and participants in the current study pointedly ask: “can medical treatment alone truly benefit them without a fundamental change in their social or economic circumstances?” In contexts where extreme poverty and violence are part of everyday life, a medical approach seems powerless to address the root causes of depression.
The authors write:
“These accounts offer nuanced accounts of how Ethiopians diagnosed with depression explain their conditions of distress, highlighting the concept of ‘impaired life’ influenced by socio-economic, cultural, familial, and spiritual factors. These accounts and their analysis underscores how socio-economic burdens, such as poverty and family conflicts, act as catalysts for depressive episodes, illustrating the intricate relationship between life’s challenges and mental health. Importantly, participants perceived their mental health struggles as inseparable from broader societal issues, challenging the efficacy of solely medical interventions. Many emphasized the necessity for substantial changes in circumstances to ensure mental well-being. These narratives further promote critical reflections on the conventional biomedical approach to mental health interventions advocated in GMH intervention strategies for addressing depression in the Global South over the past 15 years.”
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Nice. The cultural-ecosocial perspective might not gain traction in the West until after psych professionals learn how to capitalize on it as effectively as they do with the bio-medical model. Making money is the point, after all. They surely haven’t missed that point, have they?
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Indeed. As one who had a psychologist hand over a – take a percentage of gross thievery contract – combined with an appalling conservative contract, all dressed up disingenuously as an “art manager” contract … all to cover up prior psychological and psychiatric child abuse covering up, and easily recognized medical iatrogenesis, crimes.
Definitely, I have both medical and legal evidence that the only thing that the scientifically “invalid,” “BS” based, Western “mental health professions” actually believe in is greed … staggering avarice.
“’Western depression is not a universal condition,’ and treating it as such risks misallocating precious resources.” Which is what’s been happening in Western civilization for decades.
“Another study found that research in low and middle income countries tends to focus on treating depression rather than preventing it through addressing systematic issues of inequality and injustice” … which is exactly what the Western “mental health” industries systemically do in Western civilization.
The Western “mental health system” is an iatrogenic illness creation system.
https://www.amazon.com/Mad-America-Medicine-Enduring-Mistreatment/dp/0465020143
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxidrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroleptic-induced_deficit_syndrome
Stand tall, and just say NO, to the Western “mental health professions'” iatrogenic illness creating “BS,” Ethiopians, et al.
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Great to hear this clarity from the Ethiopian accounts of what we call ‘mental illness’ etc. And nicely explained. And that our psychological suffering is part of our social existence and a natural response to it is really so clear, compelling and obvious when you look at it. The reason we don’t all immediately fold to these facts is I think more to do with the difficulty in believing that the whole basis of psychiatry and psychopharmacology which I think probably costs America alone a couple of hundred billon dollars a year is one big scam. They are very bad drugs inferior to any of the illegal drugs which people use also to self-medicate and we should have compassion on people who prefer those drugs over the ones offered by psychiatry which make long term outcomes worse – and that’s every single class of medication. These facts are all indisuptable so we need to ask ourselves why they don’t create a rational response in the form of a social revolution in our understanding of health. Because everything in society is based on self-interest and it’s not in the interests of any of the structures to respond with a radical revolution in approach. So there is no hope in reform – there is hope perhaps in polemicizing it and making it crystal clear to people but not through weak propaganda – through exposure of the stark clear fact. It’s one enormous evil grift – that is a fact. We’ve got to make that fact clear. Rational arguments are time and energy poured down the drain, and hundreds of millions of lives and brains being wasted by psychiatry not just of the patients but of those who labour for the fraudulent industry – and it is a fraudulent industry. You can’t pussy foot your language otherwise you don’t give any sense of the real magnitude. Perhaps that’s the revolution that can happen in MIA – you have to tell all your writers not to pussy foot around with your language. Sometimes you do lay a nice punch.
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