The traditional healer used a white-coat and syringe in his healing practice, which symbolize curative biomedical forms of healing. I also thought the notions of symbolism was striking in the film. The nature of his dillusions seemed to be heavily influenced by this, and it left me thinking how psychotic symptoms present themselves in different cultures. It's fascinating how his sense of schizophrenic symptoms may stem from the spirutal context of his culture. The film touched on topics from his past his cultural and social historical context, the death of his child, and the potential for spiritual influence in his illness. This film makes the concept of illness narratives great to think about. Sometimes I wonder if his sense of healing would be quite different had he had more faith in this healing practice. I found it interesting how Kereta and his wife did not favor the traditional healer, because the results of the thorazine was stronger than the ginder/salt/honeycomb healing ritual that the traditional healer provided. I thought the film brought an interesting dynamic by having a psychiatrist treating Kereta, showing a contrast between biomedical treatments and the traditional ethnomedical healer. The biomedical relam of mental health was not very present in the areas in which I studied in these countries, and I found that fascinating. In my personal experiences between India and Senegal, this was definitely the case. I find it very interesting how mental health is perceived in other cultures, having a single body/mind perception. I really enjoyed your blog post as I had similar observations to our class themes being brought up throughout the film. I’m curious to see what we learn next week in terms of how else culture can influence mental illness! The film altogether showed an interesting balance between biomedical ideas of mental health, more localized understandings, and how these came to play in the religious Bali culture. I was surprised even further when he was able to “scare away” his illuminations by wearing a military outfit, which is far from a means of curing disease through biomedicine, but I recognize that multiple systems of ethnomedicine can be used over the course of one illness experience if the individual thinks that it’s logical. This could be why Kereta chose to favor a biomedical treatment over getting treatment from a traditional healer. When this happened, I thought about how the globalization of biomedical practices has likely influenced local ideas of healing practices in nonwestern cultures. A part of me expected for him to go straight to a traditional healer, however I was surprised that going to one was rather an alternative choice for him and he ended up being unhappy with the methods of the healer. One thing I found interesting was how Kereta went to a number of different doctors (a biomedical doctor, a psychiatrist, and two traditional healers) instead of focusing on one type of ethnomedical healing system. The film showed us how individuals in Bali understood and reacted to schizophrenia in particular. Such contrasting ways of understanding mental illness can create divisions in the way cultures identify and define mental illness, how the illness experience is constructed for the individual and the people around them/society in general, how illness is researched and treated, etc. In other cultures, there is no separation of the mind and body in terms of health. Even the idea of “mental health” itself is a cultural phenomenon: in the West, we tend to understand anything that has to do with mental health/well-being as separate from “physical health”, or the well-being of the body (as in everything besides the brain). Before this class, I hadn’t thought much about how the way someone understands and reacts to mental health is heavily influenced by the culture they grow up in.
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