China has a complex history in the treatment of the mentally ill. In 1849, the first mental institutions in the country were founded by Western missionaries. One of them, Dr. John G. Kerr, instituted some principles which are even valid today. Among those principles were the following: mentally ill patients shouldn’t be blamed for their actions; those that were hospitalized …
How a West African shaman helped my schizophrenic son in a way Western medicine couldn’t
After a wonderful summer of fishing and learning to surf, my son, then a 17-year-old junior at a Boston high school, suddenly told me one afternoon, “I don’t know what’s happening; I can’t find my old self again.” Soon after, Franklin had to be hospitalized. The evaluation described an “increase in psychotic symptoms, including paranoid thoughts, command hallucinations telling him to …
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