Spiritist explanatory models and practices have complemented psychiatric discourse and practice ever since the latter was implemented as a scientific medical discipline in 19th-century Europe. Whereas they have been dismissed as unscientific in their countries of origin (e.g., France and Germany), concepts and ideas experienced high estimation in Brazil, where they shape the mental health care sector until today. Currently, Brazilian health professionals promote Spiritist approaches to mental health care worldwide.
Spiritist epistemologies and methods address patients' and practitioners' postulations for holistic approaches that perceive the human being as bio-psycho-socio-spiritual and their need for sustained care where public health institutions fail. Throughout the 20th century, Spiritist institutions have complemented and substituted the public mental health care sector in Brazil and increasingly continue to do so due to the psychiatric deinstitutionalization policy that, on the one hand, postulates humane and integrative mental health care practices but on the other hand, does not provide the necessary resources.
Whereas patients in Brazil suffer from a lack of health infrastructure, patients in Germany complain about dehumanizing approaches in biomedical psychiatry. However, political decision-makers and media attempt to condemn alternative approaches to (mental) health. It has probably been most visible throughout the Covid19 pandemic but is valid for the entire (post)colonial strategy of promoting biomedicine and psychiatry according to European models of self and health while denying deviant socio-cultural practices and notions of well-being.
This contribution investigates complementary and alternative approaches to mental health in Brazilian Spiritism by contributing to the anthropological discussion of three interdependent levels: Translocal Relations (negotiation of global and local approaches to mental health), Healing Cooperation (integration of local and global knowledge and practice regarding mental health) & Aesthetics of Healing (sensory aspects of health-seeking behavior and therapy). It involves methodological reflections on Sensory Ethnography as a tool for Medical Anthropology.
