Book contents
- Selling Healing
- Selling Healing
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures, Tables and Boxes
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Frontispiece
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 If You Sell Your Sickness You Get a Cure
- Chapter 3 Mr Wise and Mr Foolish Go to Town
- Chapter 4 All Die (No) Be Die
- Chapter 5 Food Is Medicine, Food Is Poison
- Chapter 6 Out of Your Mind
- Chapter 7 We Cannot Eat Stories
- Chapter 8 Colonial Virus
- Chapter 9 Conclusions
- Book part
- References
- Index
Chapter 6 - Out of Your Mind
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2025
Book contents
- Selling Healing
- Selling Healing
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures, Tables and Boxes
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Frontispiece
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 If You Sell Your Sickness You Get a Cure
- Chapter 3 Mr Wise and Mr Foolish Go to Town
- Chapter 4 All Die (No) Be Die
- Chapter 5 Food Is Medicine, Food Is Poison
- Chapter 6 Out of Your Mind
- Chapter 7 We Cannot Eat Stories
- Chapter 8 Colonial Virus
- Chapter 9 Conclusions
- Book part
- References
- Index
Summary
Ghanaian artist and academic Bernard Akoi-Jackson developed and led a multi-year art therapy programme with patients at Pantang Psychiatric Hospital, one of Ghana’s three psychiatric hospitals. Chapter 6 focuses on an exhibition I co-curated with Akoi-Jackson on mental health promotion at the Nubuke Foundation, Accra, in 2009, inspired by this programme. Artwork produced by patients was exhibited alongside commissioned paintings on a pre-determined theme of ‘mental health’ from established Ghanaian contemporary artists and photographs from an anthropological study on mental healthcare in shrines and prayer camps. I detail the rationale and process of curating the exhibition and discuss visitors’ responses, which converged on two themes: the art exhibition as a viable approach for mental health promotion and arts therapies as methods of rehumanising the psychiatric space. I reflect on what the curating process revealed about the multilayered challenges faced by communities affected by severe chronic mental illness and where the arts can play a role in forging more robust collaborations between psychiatric and indigenous healing systems.
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- Selling HealingCreative Arts and Health Communication in Ghana, pp. 96 - 114Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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