What does a father do when hope is gone that his only son
can ever lead anything close to a "normal" life? That's the question
that haunted Dick Russell in the fall of 2011, when his son, Franklin, was
thirty-two. At the age of seventeen, Franklin
had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. For years he spent time in and out of
various hospitals, and even went through periods of adamantly denying that Dick
was actually his father. Desperately seeking an alternative to the medical
model's medication regimen, Dick introduces Franklin
to West African Dagara shaman and writer Malidoma Patrice Somé, Phd. Somé helps Franklin
in a way Western medicine couldn't, bringing to light the psychic capabilities
behind the seemingly delusional thought patterns, as well as his artistic
talents.
The Dagara people of West Africa have
an entirely different view of what is actually happening to someone who has
been diagnosed as "mentally ill." In the shamanic view, mental
illness signals "the birth of a healer," explains Somé. Thus, mental disorders are spiritual
emergencies, spiritual crises, and need to be regarded as such to aid the
healer in being born. What those in the West view as mental illness, the Dagara
people regard as "good news from the other world." The person going
through the crisis has been chosen as a medium for a message to the community
that needs to be communicated from the spirit realm.
A different perspective opens up very different possibilities.
The Dagara people use ritual to relieve the suffering at the core of
"mental illness." According to Somé, ritual can open the way for the
individual's healing relationship with helping spirits that supports a cure or
definitive movement out of the "mentally ill" state of being and back
into the world as an individual better equipped than most to give their gifts
to the world. To learn more, look inside Dick Russell's memoir, "My Mysterious Son: A Life-Changing Passage Between Schizophrenia and Shamanism."
