Voodou Priests And Doctors Are On The Frontline Of Haiti's Mental Health Care

Reuters By ANASTASIA MOLONEY


PORT-AU-PRINCE (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Five years after a massive earthquake rocked Haiti, killing more than 200,000 people and reducing homes to rubble, few survivors would say they were traumatised or suffering depression as a result of the disaster.

Haitians do not tend to use the word 'depression' to describe symptoms of mental illness. Instead they may complain of a lack of energy or appetite, insomnia, nightmares, a constricted heart or thinking too much, health workers say.

Mental illness is still a taboo in the Caribbean nation, which had no functioning mental health system in place before earthquake. In Haiti, it is common for people with mental illnesses to be locked up in hospital psychiatric wards or, believing they are possessed, to seek help from voodoo priests.

Yet plagued by guilt, fear, trauma and grief, mental illness remains a reality for many Haitians still struggling to cope with the loss of their relatives, homes and even, limbs, in the aftermath of the Jan. 12, 2010 quake.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/14/voodoo-haiti-mental-health_n_6471624.html?utm_hp_ref=religion