The educated in Africa use 'Eddogo' as escapism when they are mentally ill while the uneducated are just ignorant. Nevertheless, Africans need to stop calling people with mental health problems ”mad'. It is a bad tag that has made a lot of people to conceal this problem because of the stigma people have towards people with mental health.
In USA, for example, during their last presidential campaigns, I heard that one of the presidential candidates, McCain, attempted suicide twice long time ago, yet his campaign refused to release his full mental health records to the public. Nevertheless, his opponents did not make too much political capital out of it. If it was in Uganda, even president Museveni would have made it a serious campaign issue as he did with Besigye and HIV in 2001.
The truth is that mental illness is a real, debilitation disease, every bit as serious as cancer or heart disease, but it can be treated with the right medication. If anyone needs proof, they just read Bukedde newspaper every day. The stories there are so shocking. One approach to help you identify the mentally ill in our society is to understand their psychological processes. Once you understand why these people behave so irrationally, you can communicate more effectively with them.
There are a lot of stories in Bukedde where you find a man or woman who has killed their family simply due to depression and anxiety, but people still keep talking about Vodoo/Eddogo/ Jinns.
By the way, I have got a theory about witchcraft or Eddogo in poor societies. I believe things like witchcraft are signs of a poor and broken society. I also believe that witchcraft among family members symbolizes a broken and divided family within an already broken and poor society. If the society is already broken, witchcraft plays a role to save lives in big numbers in the sense that at least people don't resort to practical means to settle their differences. If, for instance, woman A realizes that witchcraft does not work against woman B, she could find it easy to resort to practical ways of eliminating Woman B, but because she believes in witchcraft woman B is still breathing.
With a society with fewer resources to solve murders, I think witchcraft itself may be a blessing in disguise. I think it was naturally designed to save the lives of an ignorant population. As the country's middle class increases, things like witchcraft and mental illness will be brought more in the lime light and get addressed urgently. At the moment, there isn't a lot that is going to change in a country, like Uganda, as far as these issues are concerned. Yes, we can get the media to keep the fire burning but it won't make much difference because the policy makers in the country themselves are 'escapists”.
However, what is happening in developing countries now was almost a similar story even in developed nations, such as USA, till when the society eventually changed itself politically, economically and socially.
In USA, for instance, mental patients were once treated as prisoners. The mental health movement of the 1950s led by the national Mental Health Association was able to remove public mental hospitals from control by prison authorities and place them under medical administrators. In the 1960s, the same folks made it possible for people who needed treatment in Community Mental Health Centers instead of hospitals. It was almost the same story in the UK when you visit their history. The Welsh were the biggest 'Balogo' in the UK, but all that is now water under the bridge. Africa will also change with time as it keeps developing.
Abbey Kibirige Semuwemba
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