ABSTRACT

This chapter explores diverse understandings of health and healing in Timor-Leste and considers how the play out in the context of mental health. It identifies the range of customary and religious faith-based healers and healing practices commonly consulted by patients with mental illness and their families. The chapter discusses how might customary, other religious and clinical approaches to mental health be woven together to improve equitable access to culturally competent and context-appropriate health services. Primary healthcare doctors and nurses are authorised to prescribe and/or renew prescriptions for some psychotherapeutic medicines. Primary healthcare nurses with mental health training are also authorised to diagnose or treat mental disorders. Individual and collective decisions about seeking health services and what particular form of treatment to follow are influenced by a range of factors. Greater attention to local explanatory models and expressions of distress may in fact help improve engagement with mental health services.