Of Spirits and Madness: An American Psychiatrist in Africa

"This is a wonderful book. It gives a warm and loving picture of an isolated African country regularly castigated in the US press. It reiterates eloquently lessons lost by our medical establishment and our populace, which need to be regained." --Journal of the American Medical Association. An unforgettable tale of medicine at the crossroads of two cultures. After four years of psychiatric residency and two years of practice as an attending psychiatrist in San Francisco­­ which included stints in an emergency room and the city jail­­. Paul Linde thought he'd seen it all. When his pediatrician wife decided that she wanted to work as a doctor in Africa, he went along for the ride, greeting the prospect with a blase "same job, different continent," attitude. What he found, instead, would challenge much of what he thought he knew about mental illness and transform him as a physician and as a human being. Of Spirits and Madness is Dr. Linde's account of his year spent practicing psychiatry in Zimbabwe's Harare Central Hospital. In a compelling narrative brimming with compassion, insight, and no small measure of good humor, he tells of his shock at the magnitude of human suffering that greeted him on his arrival in Africa and his initial bafflement with its people's superstitions and differing worldview. He introduces us to his patients, vividly relating how his experiences with them awakened him to the ways in which mental illness cuts across cultures, ultimately filling him with a deep admiration for the incredible patience and spiritual dignity with which they endured their poverty and illnesses.