Doctoral Dissertation Research: Trauma, Mental Illness, and Cen: Networks of Therapeutic Care and the Cohabitation of Concepts of Suffering In Postwar Northern Uganda

University Of California-Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

University of California-Davis doctoral student Adrian Yen, supervised by Dr. Alan Klima, will use northern Uganda's Acholi community as a case study to investigate the global influence of Western psychiatry and its implications for post-conflict societies. The proposed research will be conducted in the northern district of Gulu, a major site of the recent civil war between the Lord's Resistance Army and the Ugandan government. There, international peace-building initiatives increasingly promote the use of Western psychiatry as a way of treating what was recently declared one of the highest rates of war-related mental illness recorded in clinical history. Focusing on a novel system of referrals that remits individuals back and forth among traditional healers, the psychiatry ward of the region's main government hospital, and NGOs, the research will investigate how different psychiatric concepts and practices intersect with popular Acholi models of traditional healing, and how these encounters shape experiences of distress and related therapeutic outcomes for thousands of affected individuals in the region. Through fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork with traditional healers, mental health professionals, and Acholi clients, the researcher will observe clinical consultations, conduct semi-structured interviews, and collect illness narratives to investigate three inter-related sets of research questions. First, why and how are psychiatric therapies made available to Acholi people today, and who is involved in their administration? Second, how do different practitioners adapt and manage the confluence of illness concepts and practices in the region, and how do their clients respond to these accommodations? Finally, why do Acholi people turn to psychiatric medicine and related technologies like drugs and psycho-therapy, and how do they understand the role these therapeutic tools play in their lives and communities? The results of this research will contribute to a deeper understanding of how traditional healing practices and psychiatric knowledge affect one another and give rise to novel treatment regimes in a post-conflict context. By doing so, the research stands to make an important contribution to the treatment of people affected by traumatic events and warfare. Findings from this research will also contribute to understandings of biomedicine and the implications of its growing influence in the government of human affairs. Finally, funding for this research supports the education of a social scientist.