RCIN and OZwRCIN projects

Object

Title: “New Psychiatry” and Traditional Healing in Kyrgyzstan: Attempts to Develop Culturally Sensitive and Community-Based Treatment

Creator:

Penkala-Gawęcka, Danuta

Date issued/created:

2019

Resource type:

Text

Subtitle:

Ethnologia Polona 40 (2019)

Publisher:

Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Polish Academy of Sciences

Place of publishing:

Warsaw

Description:

24 cm

Type of object:

Journal/Article

Abstract:

Healthcare in post-Soviet Central Asian countries, and mental healthcare in particular, has still preserved many characteristics of the previous Soviet system. In the Kyrgyz Republic, a wide-ranging reform of the healthcare system, which started in the second half of the 1990s, has not included psychiatric services in its priorities. In the face of severe deficiencies in the system, such as an over-institutionalisation of mental healthcare and a lack of adequate financing, a group of local psychiatrists, aware of the standards of contemporary psychiatry, have tried to implement an approach promoting culturally sensitive and community-based treatment of mentally ill patients. They notice a great popularity of traditional healers and their role in local communities, based on a worldview shared with their patients and competence in values and norms of social life. Moreover, these psychiatrists understand that healers’ interventions can be effective in the cases of non-psychotic mental health disorders, and attempt to develop some kind of cooperation with Kyrgyz healers, especially in crisis situations. In this article, grounded in the publications of this group of psychiatrists and my own fieldwork in Bishkek between 2011 and 2013, I discuss these achievements and show how globally promoted ideas and directives of contemporary psychiatry have been adapted to the local conditions.

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Relation:

Ethnologia Polona

Volume:

40

Start page:

187

End page:

212

Detailed Resource Type:

Article

Format:

application/octet-stream

Resource Identifier:

oai:rcin.org.pl:98636 ; 0137-4079 ; doi:10.23858/EthP40.2019.011

Source:

IAiE PAN, call no. P 366 ; IAiE PAN, call no. P 367 ; IAiE PAN, call no. P 368 ; click here to follow the link

Language:

eng

Rights:

Creative Commons Attribution BY-SA 3.0 PL license

Terms of use:

Copyright-protected material. [CC BY-SA 3.0 PL] May be used within the scope specified in Creative Commons Attribution BY-SA 3.0 PL license, full text available at: ; -

Digitizing institution:

Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Original in:

Library of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Projects co-financed by:

Operational Program Digital Poland, 2014-2020, Measure 2.3: Digital accessibility and usefulness of public sector information; funds from the European Regional Development Fund and national co-financing from the state budget. ; European Union. European Regional Development Fund

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