Spiritual and Mental Health Crisis in Globalizing Senegal: A History of Transcultural Psychiatry

Spiritual and Mental Health Crisis in Globalizing Senegal explores the  history of mental health in Senegal, and how psychological difficulties  were expressed in the terms of spiritualism, magic, witchcraft, spirit  possession, and ancestor worship.

Focused on the effervescent and  fruitful early post-colonial years at the Fann Hospital, situated at  the famed University of Dakar, Cheikh Anta Diop, this book reveals  provocative treatment innovations via case studies of individuals  struggling for health and healing, and thus operates as a suspension  bridge between scholarship on witchcraft and magic on the one side and  the history psychiatry and psychoanalysis on the other.

Through  these case studies, this book creates a new route of exchange for  healing knowledge for a broad array of West African spiritual troubles,  mental illness, magic, soul cannibalism, witchcraft, spirit possession,  and psychosis.