Health and Integrative Wellness: Mapping Wellness and Its Cultural Psychology in Contemporary Africa

Abstract

The present work probes the ethnocultural psychology of African people in the creative negotiations of wellness across healing spaces. Using data drawn from ethnographic method, the research engages the cultural dynamics in the emerging ethnomedical conversations among 250 sick clients of African healing shrines, over 50 contemporary practitioners of African healing shrines, 40 biomedical doctors and nurses, and 40 church workers/Christian healers in Nigeria and Ghana. The findings of this research suggest that there are dialogic paths of ecumenical interaction, active routes of referral systems, and social contours of transborder spiritualities across contemporary African healing spaces.