African psychology and the Africentric paradigm to clinical diagnosis and treatment

Abstract

The notion of clinical or psychological diagnosis in African psychology is used, at times, to refer to the redressive action that is taken to determine the source of a difficult/abnormal illness. The need for such an interventive action arises in the face of a sudden or ‘strange’ illness that befalls a family member and refuses to abate after all medicines (including Western psychiatric hospitalization) have been administered. Under such a situation, the tendency within the Africentric paradigm to mental health and illness is to see such a challenging illness as an extraordinary or abnormal illness that carries a hidden message that must first be decoded before a decisive solution to achieving a cure can be found. Consequently, recognizing certain illnesses as ‘symbolic illnesses’ or ones with a hidden meaning, indigenous African peoples routinely persuade themselves that they must go beyond the ‘information given’ (Bruner, 1986) to determine ‘who’ is speaking through such an illness and what they are expected to do to effect a cure. In this way, they try to set their eyes not only on what is happening to the sick one (the observable manifestations of the illness) but also on the question of identifying the agent behind its onset and escalation in their approach for questioning the misfortune. This article draws attention to the missing link in the Western paradigm to psychopathology and treatment that makes it unable to deal decisively with certain illness presentations of the Black African client.