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Prayer Camps and Biomedical Care in Ghana: Is Collaboration in Mental Health Care Possible?

BACKGROUND: Experts have suggested that intersectoral partnerships between prayer camps and biomedical care providers may be an effective strategy to address the overwhelming shortage of mental health care workers in Africa and other low-income settings. Nevertheless, previous studies have not explo...

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Autores principales: Arias, Daniel, Taylor, Lauren, Ofori-Atta, Angela, Bradley, Elizabeth H.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5019394/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27618551
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0162305
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author Arias, Daniel
Taylor, Lauren
Ofori-Atta, Angela
Bradley, Elizabeth H.
author_facet Arias, Daniel
Taylor, Lauren
Ofori-Atta, Angela
Bradley, Elizabeth H.
author_sort Arias, Daniel
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Experts have suggested that intersectoral partnerships between prayer camps and biomedical care providers may be an effective strategy to address the overwhelming shortage of mental health care workers in Africa and other low-income settings. Nevertheless, previous studies have not explored whether the prayer camp and biomedical staff beliefs and practices provide sufficient common ground to enable cooperative relationships. Therefore, we sought to examine the beliefs and practices of prayer camp staff and the perspective of biomedical care providers, with the goal of characterizing interest in—and potential for—intersectoral partnership between prayer camp staff and biomedical care providers. METHODS: We conducted 50 open-ended, semi-structured interviews with prophets and staff at nine Christian prayer camps in Ghana, and with staff within Ghana’s three public psychiatric hospitals. We used the purposive sampling method to recruit participants and the constant comparative method for qualitative data analysis. RESULTS: Prayer camp staff expressed interest in collaboration with biomedical mental health care providers, particularly if partnerships could provide technical support introducing medications in the prayer camp and address key shortcomings in their infrastructure and hygienic conditions. Nevertheless, challenges for collaboration were apparent as prayer camp staff expressed strong beliefs in a spiritual rather than biomedical explanatory model for mental illness, frequently used fasting and chained restraints in the course of treatment, and endorsed only short-term use of medication to treat mental illness—expressing concerns that long-term medication regimens masked underlying spiritual causes of illness. Biomedical providers were skeptical about the spiritual interpretations of mental illness held by faith healers, and were concerned by the use of chains, fasting, and the lack of adequate living facilities for patients in prayer camps; many, however, expressed interest in engaging with prayer camps to expand access to clinical care for patients residing in the camps. CONCLUSIONS: The findings demonstrate that biomedical care providers are interested in engaging with prayer camps. Key areas where partnerships may best improve conditions for patients at prayer camps include collaborating on creating safe and secure physical spaces and delivering medication for mental illness to patients living in prayer camps. However, while prayer camp staff are willing to engage biomedical knowledge, deeply held beliefs and routine practices of faith and biomedical healers are difficult to reconcile Additional discussion is needed to find the common ground on which the scarce resources for mental health care in Ghana can collaborate most effectively.
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spelling pubmed-50193942016-09-27 Prayer Camps and Biomedical Care in Ghana: Is Collaboration in Mental Health Care Possible? Arias, Daniel Taylor, Lauren Ofori-Atta, Angela Bradley, Elizabeth H. PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Experts have suggested that intersectoral partnerships between prayer camps and biomedical care providers may be an effective strategy to address the overwhelming shortage of mental health care workers in Africa and other low-income settings. Nevertheless, previous studies have not explored whether the prayer camp and biomedical staff beliefs and practices provide sufficient common ground to enable cooperative relationships. Therefore, we sought to examine the beliefs and practices of prayer camp staff and the perspective of biomedical care providers, with the goal of characterizing interest in—and potential for—intersectoral partnership between prayer camp staff and biomedical care providers. METHODS: We conducted 50 open-ended, semi-structured interviews with prophets and staff at nine Christian prayer camps in Ghana, and with staff within Ghana’s three public psychiatric hospitals. We used the purposive sampling method to recruit participants and the constant comparative method for qualitative data analysis. RESULTS: Prayer camp staff expressed interest in collaboration with biomedical mental health care providers, particularly if partnerships could provide technical support introducing medications in the prayer camp and address key shortcomings in their infrastructure and hygienic conditions. Nevertheless, challenges for collaboration were apparent as prayer camp staff expressed strong beliefs in a spiritual rather than biomedical explanatory model for mental illness, frequently used fasting and chained restraints in the course of treatment, and endorsed only short-term use of medication to treat mental illness—expressing concerns that long-term medication regimens masked underlying spiritual causes of illness. Biomedical providers were skeptical about the spiritual interpretations of mental illness held by faith healers, and were concerned by the use of chains, fasting, and the lack of adequate living facilities for patients in prayer camps; many, however, expressed interest in engaging with prayer camps to expand access to clinical care for patients residing in the camps. CONCLUSIONS: The findings demonstrate that biomedical care providers are interested in engaging with prayer camps. Key areas where partnerships may best improve conditions for patients at prayer camps include collaborating on creating safe and secure physical spaces and delivering medication for mental illness to patients living in prayer camps. However, while prayer camp staff are willing to engage biomedical knowledge, deeply held beliefs and routine practices of faith and biomedical healers are difficult to reconcile Additional discussion is needed to find the common ground on which the scarce resources for mental health care in Ghana can collaborate most effectively. Public Library of Science 2016-09-12 /pmc/articles/PMC5019394/ /pubmed/27618551 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0162305 Text en © 2016 Arias et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Arias, Daniel
Taylor, Lauren
Ofori-Atta, Angela
Bradley, Elizabeth H.
Prayer Camps and Biomedical Care in Ghana: Is Collaboration in Mental Health Care Possible?
title Prayer Camps and Biomedical Care in Ghana: Is Collaboration in Mental Health Care Possible?
title_full Prayer Camps and Biomedical Care in Ghana: Is Collaboration in Mental Health Care Possible?
title_fullStr Prayer Camps and Biomedical Care in Ghana: Is Collaboration in Mental Health Care Possible?
title_full_unstemmed Prayer Camps and Biomedical Care in Ghana: Is Collaboration in Mental Health Care Possible?
title_short Prayer Camps and Biomedical Care in Ghana: Is Collaboration in Mental Health Care Possible?
title_sort prayer camps and biomedical care in ghana: is collaboration in mental health care possible?
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5019394/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27618551
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0162305
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