lots of reactions to the experience at the hospital today

What an experience, going with Waly to the Hopital de Fann to meet with the doctor in charge of the psychiatric unit. We were told to get there at 8 AM, so I woke up at 6, left my house by 7, and met Waly at school at 7:30. We get to the hospital around 7:50 and proceed to wait for the doctor until he finally shows up (after Waly sticks his head in to remind them that we're waiting, and finds out that they had forgotten about us) at 9:50. Yes, that is two hours of waiting in a decrepit hospital waiting room. However, on the bright side, there was a TV in the waiting room that was playing a French documentary about the alleged conspiracy behind Tupac Shakur's murder, so while waiting, I got to learn a lot about East LA gang life, en francais. Very informative!

I wouldn't have been as cranky and sleepy as I had been if I had not woken up at 1 AM in the night and not been able to go back to sleep. I tried reading and listening to music and meditating, and nothing was able to put me back to sleep, so I eventually just got up at 6, and am definitely feeling the effects of only sleeping for 2 hours, right now.

Anyway, so after the doctor finally called us into his office, I came to the realization that the same things that bother me about the mental health care system in the US actually apply cross-culturally, and are maybe just a universal thing. The doctor, very condescendingly, told me that this was a psychiatric hospital, yet I am interested in psychology, and did I know the difference between the two fields. He told me that at the hospital here, they are more focused on biochemical cures to psychosomatic maladies, and that the field of psychology only offers talk therapy, which is not scientifically-based so proves to be less helpful (his words, not mine).

Like I said, this is not a complaint that I have about Senegalese mental health care, but a complaint and a frustration that I have always felt in regard to the field of mental health. There is this huge division between the two fields, and for some reason or another, it's hard for psychiatry to see the benefits of psychology, and vica versa. When I told this doctor that I was interested in talk therapy as a future career path in the United States, he looked at me in this confused way as if to say, "Silly little toubab, you don't know anything about medicine." I felt as if, the whole time, he was baffled as to why I was there and what it was that I wanted to do.

To clarify to myself and any curious readers, what I want out of this service learning project is to observe how mental health care works in Senegal and cross-culturally in general. Surely the United States regards psychosomatic maladies in a different way than Senegal, or China, or Afghanistan, or any other country out there, just because each culture has its own values and ideas. As a student of psychology, it would be cool to get some insights and experience working with non-Americans, because who is to say that I'll stay in the States for the rest of my life, and it's about time to step out of my Western-centric bubble's view of psychology. (Shoot, now I have to translate all of this into French as a statement of purpose, which I am terrified to write, because I have not written anything in French in about a year, and it is kind of an important document to potentially mess up grammatically or phonetically)

So anyway, then the doctor took me to the hospital library where he showed me "Psychopathologie Africaine," the scientific journal that was actually started here in Dakar, at this very hospital, in 1965, and publishes some of the pioneering work in psychiatry/psychology in West Africa. When he started showing me some of the titles of the articles in it, such as "Suicidality among South African college students," and "Communicating cross-culturally," and other things about schizophrenia and child abuse, I realized, "Okay, I've totally got this under control. Really, the issues in the field of psychopathology are the same all over the world, no matter how each individual country addresses them. Initially, he made me feel really out-of-my-element, as if I would be of no help to the hospital and as if I really didn't have much of an idea as to what I wanted to do there. But then when I asked him what kinds of malades were kept at the hospital, and he told me it's pretty much all the same kinds as in the United States, and then when I saw those journal articles, I reminded myself that this is the same exact field of work that I'd be pursuing in the United States, and language/culture is not going to get in my way of pursuing it here.

I am going to go back on Friday and hopefully get situated in some sort of routine/schedule. I'm nervous because today Waly spoke for me a lot of the time, and I'm scared that my French skills will not be good enough for me to advocate for myself in front of all of these big, scary medical professionals.

We will see how all of this unfolds. I am definitely intrigued, to say the least!