‘Notes on an Exorcism’

Andrew Solomon, author of Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, tells the story of his visit to Senegal, west Africa, where he learned about treatments for depression that depart significantly from dominant Western approaches.  In fact, in Senegal, there is no word for “depression.”  There, depression is not seen as something that happens to individual minds in isolation.  Instead, it is seen as an external force, as spirit possession.  The solution, thus, is a kind of exorcism, a ceremony called an “ndop.”

As a treatment, an “ndop” is communal, dynamic, and physical, almost like a celebration.  This is in stark contrast to the way depression is typically understood and treated in the West.  In Western societies, depression is seen in individualistic terms.  As Thomas Scheff notes, “Western societies are oriented toward individualism and individual achievement rather than toward groups and toward tradition, as in Asian and other traditional societies.”  This orientation can often lead to “blaming the victim” for suffering, and also to stigmatization.  (This relates to Conrad and Schneider’s point about how the “medicalization of madness” is by no means an unequivocal sign of “progress”.)

Research indicates that the “spirit-possession” understanding of mental illness may actually have beneficial social functions.  Ethan Watters, author of Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, describes these intriguing findings on treatment for schizophrenia in the New York Times Magazine:

“NOWHERE ARE THE limitations of Western ideas and treatments more evident than in the case of schizophrenia. Researchers have long sought to understand what may be the most perplexing finding in the cross-cultural study of mental illness: people with schizophrenia in developing countries appear to fare better over time than those living in industrialized nations.

!!!!! This was the startling result of three large international studies carried out by the World Health Organization over the course of 30 years, starting in the early 1970s. The research showed that patients outside the United States and Europe had significantly lower relapse rates — as much as two-thirds lower in one follow-up study. These findings have been widely discussed and debated in part because of their obvious incongruity: the regions of the world with the most resources to devote to the illness — the best technology, the cutting-edge medicines and the best-financed academic and private-research institutions — had the most troubled and socially marginalized patients.

!!!!! Trying to unravel this mystery, the anthropologist Juli McGruder from the University of Puget Sound spent years in Zanzibar studying families of schizophrenics. Though the population is predominantly Muslim, Swahili spirit-possession beliefs are still prevalent in the archipelago and commonly evoked to explain the actions of anyone violating social norms — from a sister lashing out at her brother to someone beset by psychotic delusions.

!!!!! McGruder found that far from being stigmatizing, these beliefs served certain useful functions. The beliefs prescribed a variety of socially accepted interventions and ministrations that kept the ill person bound to the family and kinship group. ‘Muslim and Swahili spirits are not exorcised in the Christian sense of casting out demons,’ McGruder determined. ‘Rather they are coaxed with food and goods, feted with song and dance. They are placated, settled, reduced in malfeasance.’ McGruder saw this approach in many small acts of kindness. She watched family members use saffron paste to write phrases from the Koran on the rims of drinking bowls so the ill person could literally imbibe the holy words. The spirit-possession beliefs had other unexpected benefits. Critically, the story allowed the person with schizophrenia a cleaner bill of health when the illness went into remission. An ill individual enjoying a time of relative mental health could, at least temporarily, retake his or her responsibilities in the kinship group. Since the illness was seen as the work of outside forces, it was understood as an affliction for the sufferer but not as an identity.” !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Solomon ends the piece by brilliantly flipping the cultural script on mental health treatment.  He describes a Rwandan mental health practitioner’s take on the conventional western treatment for depression:

“We had a lot of trouble with Western mental health workers who came here immediately after the genocide and we had to ask some of them to leave…Their practice did not involve being outside in the sun…which is after all where you begin to feel better.  There was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again, when you’re depressed and you’re low and you need to have your blood flowing. There was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy. There was no acknowledgement of depression as something invasive and external that could actually be cast out of you again. Instead, they would take people one at a time into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them.  We had to get them to leave the country.”

NYC Teen Pregnancy Prevention Campaign – Shame & Blame?

You may have seen these posters around the subway and on bus shelters.  They’re part of a NYC campaign from the Human Resources Adminstration, “Think Being A Teen Parent Won’t Cost You?”  And they’re drawing mounting criticism from reproductive health advocates, women who had children as teenagers, youth advocates and others who say they stigmatize teenage mothers without offering any information to help girls prevent unplanned pregnancies.  Planned Parenthood has emerged as a leading critic of the campaign, saying it “ignores the racial, economic and social factors that contribute to teenage pregnancy” and creates “stigma, hostility and negative public opinions about teen pregnancy and parenthood rather than offering alternative aspirations for young people.”  The New York Coalition for Reproductive Justice (NYCRJ) has launched a No Stigma! No Shame! Campaign in response, calling for a teen pregnancy prevention campaign that doesn’t shame and blame teen parents, particularly teen parents of color.  Criticisms of the campaign are summarized on this Storify.

What do you think?  Will this campaign be effective in lowering teen pregnancy rates?  And what about the effect on young people who are already parents and the children of young parents?

‘Civil rights groups sue NYPD over Muslim spying’

NEW YORK (AP) — “Through the Muslim surveillance program, the NYPD has imposed an unwarranted badge of suspicion and stigma on law-abiding Muslim New Yorkers, including plaintiffs in this action,” according to the complaint, which was filed on behalf of religious and community leaders, mosques, and a charitable organization. The plaintiffs are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility project at CUNY School of Law and the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Read more here…

Blog Post #3: Frank Lucas- A Unique Case of Stigma

Frank Lucas, former drug kingpin, is an interesting example of a stigmatized individual. The biopic “American Gangster”, featuring Denzel Washington, depicted Lucas’ life. It delves into his inner struggles and motivations. The above photo is from one of the more memorable scenes in the film, where Lucas is “schooling” his younger brothers on how to approach life and conduct their businesses. In the midst of doing so, he sees a man that owes him money and he steps out of the coffee shop that they were sitting in, to have a word with him. The man doesn’t Lucas very seriously, and Lucas impatiently shoots him the head in broad daylight in front of everyone in the neighborhood. Lucas, unaffected, then walks back into the coffee shop and continues to educate his brothers on how to live. To those watching the film, Lucas is clearly a criminal and because of this he is stigmatized in our eyes. To those in Lucas’ direct environment, he may not be. This is because he acknowledges that he is stigmatized and compensates for that fact. The first way Lucas avoids being discredited is by using a disidentifier. Lucas’ disidentifier would be his suit and usual dress clothes; he uses his suit as a means to display a false, positive image of himself. In a similar sense, Lucas purchases a multitude of luxurious things to display a certain status. He buys a large mansion and luxury cars. This provides him with a sense of elevated social status; those things would be considered examples of prestige symbols. These are ways in which Lucas attempts to “correct” his stigmas.

Countering Stigma

In Goffman‘s conceptualization, stigma is an attribute that is deeply discrediting for members of a particular social category.  It’s a particular kind of relationship between attribute and stereotype.  Below is another social media campaign aimed at countering stigma (i.e., destigmatization).  Below, individuals address assumptions made about them based on their various virtual social identities, or how they tend to be categorized by others who don’t actually know them.

Who Counts as “American”?

Ten-year old Mariachi singer Sebastion de la Cruz performed the national anthem at Game 3 of the NBA finals in San Antonio — and this is how the twitterverse responded:

De la Cruz is Mexican-American, a US citizen, born and raised in San Antonio.  Based on nothing but his name and appearance apparently, many simply categorized him as “Mexican” and assumed that meant he was a “foreigner,” not “American” (#yournotamerican), even that he was here “illegally.”

The Tumblr blog, Public Shaming (“Racist Basketball Fans PISSED a Mexican-American Boy Dared to Sing Their National Anthem”) displays many more tweets in a similar vein.  What kind of assumptions about who counts as “American” are at play here? How do these claims relate to Goffman’s conceptualization of stigma (and stigma symbols) and Becker’s master status concept?

The “Public Shaming” blog is a good example of a means of destigmatization, by exposing the inaccuracies and hypocrisy of everyday negative stereotyping.

As the author Matt Binder describes: “I started retweeting people complaining about welfare, food stamps, etc. and then following it up with a previous tweet of theirs that makes them look hypocritical/dumb/etc.”