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Description of  Disturbing Spirits: Mental Illness, Trauma, and Treatment in Modern Syria and Lebanon

0268200726 epub This book investigates the psychological toll of conflict in the Middle East during the twentieth century, including discussion of how spiritual and religious frameworks influence practice and theory. The concept of mental health treatment in war-torn Middle Eastern nations is painfully understudied. In Disturbing Spirits, Beverly A. Tsacoyianis blends social, cultural, and medical history research methods with approaches in disability and trauma studies to demonstrate that the history of mental illness in Syria and Lebanon since the 1890s is embedded in disparatebut not necessarily mutually exclusiveideas about legitimate healing. Tsacoyianis examines the encounters between Western psychiatry and local practices and argues that the attempt to implement modern cosmopolitan biomedicine for the last 120 years has largely failedin part because of political instability and political traumas and in part because of narrow definitions of modern medicine that excluded spirituality and locally meaningful cultural practices.