ABSTRACT
This chapter takes the reader to the research field and unfolds the author's ethnographic data regarding the experiences of patients, therapists, and other persons involved in Spiritist mental healthcare. It focuses on the context of a Spiritist psychiatric hospital in Marília, São Paulo/Brazil, and an affiliated Spiritist center, the healing cooperation between Spiritists and mental healthcare professionals, and particular practices such as lectures and study groups, evangelization, fraternal care, energetic healing, and mediumship (disobsession). It addresses explanatory models that frame disease categories, illness experiences, and social implications. It concludes with an analysis of how care and self-care intersect once many caregivers have been caretakers themselves and regard the support of others as a fundamental aspect of their well-being. General questions discussed throughout this chapter are (1) how mergers of cosmopolitan medicine and alternative or complementary practices of religious healing respond to the needs of afflicted persons, (2) how they are implemented, (3) if asymmetric power imbalances exist, and (4) what are the implications for an assumed diversification of mental healthcare?
