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Traditional healers and mental health in South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Tuviah Zabow
Tuviah Zabow*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Cape Town, South Africa, email [email protected]
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Psychiatric patients access both indigenous healers and services rendered by psychiatric facilities in South Africa. The various groups of healers which are available are clearly not all acceptable to the whole population and variable experiences are reported with different categories of healer and the different treatments provided. An increasing collaboration between psychiatric services and indigenous healers is becoming evident, as in other health services. Reports indicate that many African psychiatric patients seek treatment from indigenous healers while attending psychiatric clinics, in both rural and urban regions. This has led to much discussion and differing viewpoints as to the possible benefits and disadvantages of collaboration and simultaneous use of different treatment modalities. Included in this is the question of the medical competence of traditional healers and the possible neglect of serious conditions.

Type
Thematic Papers — Traditional Healers
Information
International Psychiatry , Volume 4 , Issue 4 , October 2007 , pp. 81 - 83
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2007

References

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