Coercion in community mental health care: African perspectives

Abstract

Mental health care on the African continent is plagued by a number of difficulties that range from a scarcity of resources to the stigma about and misunderstanding of mental illness itself. This chapter focuses on community psychiatry in Sub-Saharan Africa in particular and considers diverse issues such as economic shortages, stigma, faith healing, and the role of the family. It is the first time that such issues have been published in such a way, collating information from a variety of countries in the region. The authors have searched for all the available literature and assimilated it into a coherent narrative of ‘where we are’ with coercion in community psychiatry in Africa.