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Local Knowledge, Traditional Healers and Psychology: Causes, Symptoms And Treatments of Mental, Disorders in Timor.Leste.

2019; Volume: 4; Linguagem: Inglês

10.53930/27892182.dialogos.4.72

2789-2182

Alessandro Boarccaech,

Mental Health Treatment and Access

This article presents the result of research on the perceptions about the meanings, causes, symptoms and treatments of mental disorders in contemporary Timorese society. To this end, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 48 matan-dook – healers, doctors and mediators between the world of the living and the world of the dead by ancestral customs and practices – in the municipalities of Aileu, Ainaro, Dili, Liquiçá, Los Palos, Maliana, Manatuto, Manufahi and Viqueque. In general terms, mental disorders would have a somatic-psychic-spiritual character and would be the consequence of actions perceived as deviant from the socially established norm, constituting a rupture in the conception of harmony and social order.