An hour-long therapy session with a stranger to cope with trauma from genocide is like taking a Tylenol for a bullet wound. And it’s not even easy to find a good psychologist in the west, I can’t imagine every Rwandan found the perfect doctor for them
Ethnocentrism in western psychology is a very real and very big problem.
If the trauma was collective, it makes sense for the therapy to be as well.
Edit: hell, even individual trauma can benefit immensely from connecting with people with similar experiences.
My wariness with the thread was more about the non marxist, non critical attitude. I think it is great to have tools to deal with mental health problems, but to ignore that they are not only material in the sense of chemicals in your brain, but also materially and socially in the sense of relations you have to your community etc. is problematic imho.
So no worries.
I also think the site has a problem with anti-intellectualism surrounding mental health. Therapy is objectively a good thing. If it hasn’t helped at all, you probably haven’t found the right therapist/treatment, or that treatment hasn’t been discovered yet.
I’ve noticed this too and it’s almost always based on the person making weird assumptions about what psychology is and talking out of their ass.
