Sociodrama in the Rehabilitation of Chronic Mentally Ill Patients

Stigma toward mental illness in Latin America and the Caribbean: a systematic review

“…49 The authors pointed out that this process considered several qualitative assessments of the population, addressing particular cultural aspects of Caribbean countries. Indeed, in comparison with another report, 50 Jamaican people began to show positive attitudes toward mental illness as early as the 1970s, with special mental health community work carried out via psycho-historiography and cultural therapy. Both approaches highlight the history, knowledge, and identities of specific communities.…”

FromExplanitationsandMadnificent Irationstode Culcha Clash: Popular Theatre as Psychotherapy

“…Some providers have turned for assistance to mental health providers in the Caribbean, where the clinical provision of psychiatric care for Caribbean people has been successful and acceptable (Bhugra et al 1996;Hickling 1993Hickling , 1997Neehall 1991). Working in this context, Freire (1972Freire ( , 1977 emphasizes the idea of education as cultural action, and that liberation from oppression requires collective struggle.…”

“…The connection had been made by his wife Elaine Wint Leslie, who was the producer of a novel radio experience on the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation, The Radio Psychiatrist , which I had pioneered in 1975. In this, I received calls from the radio public and conducted modified psychiatric interviews with these callers in the 'live' radio mode (Hickling 1992a). The report of this radio experience is important in this narrative because we were involved in an innovative experiment to try to demystify psychiatry, reduce the stigma of mental illness, and advance a psychotherapeutic and educational experience for the Jamaican people.…”

“…My work in this area was followed by the development of a new form of therapy for the mentally ill at the Bellevue Mental Hospital called 'sociodrama' (Hickling 1989), which utilized some of the structural components and production methods that had emerged in the production of Explanitations . This resulted in the very successful pageants Madnificent Irations, Visionated Penetrations , Madaptations and Irations Explosion , for the Bellevue Hospital Cultural Group between 1978 and 1981.…”

“…Littlewood (1992b) asks whether there is a psychotherapy that can acceptably be applied across cultures. Working from the perspective of the multicultural Jamaican society, I have suggested that a western Cartesian model of thinking excludes the existence of psychotherapy in the non-western world, and proposed that unless psychotherapy is structured within the philosophical conjuncture of dialectics and within its application to power and oppression, Littlewood's question cannot be realistically answered (Hickling 1988).…”