Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the ways in which diverse health seeking behaviours (underpinned by ongoing shifts in local moral worlds and seemingly contradictory forms of sociality, relationality, and subjectivity) might be woven together and communicated to improve access to mental health services.

Paper long abstract:

Transcultural psychiatric studies have long shown that culture matters for how an illness is experienced and for the explanatory model influencing diagnosis. In post conflict Timor Leste, customary health and healing practices are deeply embedded in the inter-relationships between people, the ancestors and the environment. The vast majority of mental illnesses in Timor Leste are attributed by sufferers to place specific supernatural causes and in rural areas people will in most cases prioritize treatment by traditional healers in 'place' (usually locations close to their ancestral spirit houses) over treatment in places which are both socially and spiritually unknown. In more urban contexts, approaches to health and healing have been shaped by the influence of Christianity and in particular charismatic (and universalising) faith-healing practices common to both the Catholic and Protestant traditions. Although there is a high-level of informal awareness amongst the Timorese themselves of these complementary practices, this paper investigates the ways in which these diverse health seeking behaviours (underpinned by ongoing shifts in local moral worlds and seemingly contradictory forms of sociality, relationality, and subjectivity) might be woven together and communicated in order to improve equitable access to culturally and context-appropriate mental health services.