Paper short abstract:

We present two ethnographic documentaries which explore how healers and health workers in Ghana and Indonesia establish partnerships to improve mental health care and protect human rights. They suggest the value of visual methods in medical anthropology for researching ethically complex issues.

Paper long abstract:

Together for Mental Health (T4MH) is a GCRF/ESRC UK funded visual research project that was born out of the recognition that, while several scholars and institutions such as the WHO, acknowledge the potential of integrating traditional and faith-based healing into mental health care, there is very little research exploring these collaborations and how they work in particular contexts. Ghana and Indonesia have both been the focus of international concerns regarding human rights abuses against people with mental illness by traditional and faith-based healers. In both countries there have been attempts by mental health workers to establish partnerships with healers to prevent such abuses and improve care. This project used ethnographic visual methods to explore how mental health workers, families and healers come together in the two countries and the barriers and facilitators to these collaborations. We present two ethnographic documentaries which were produced through this research: Nkabom: A Little Medicine, A Little Prayer (Ghana) and Harmoni: Healing Together (Indonesia). Both films explore how healers and health workers build these relationships and suggest ways forward for a holistic approach to mental health care which promotes human rights whilst engaging with the search for meaning in mental illness. They illustrate the value of visual methods in medical anthropology for exploring ethically complex issues in health and the situated practices of healing relationships.