Struggling to be a “happy self ”? Psychotherapy and the medicalization of unhappiness in uganda

Abstract

This article is an ethnographic study of emergent discourses, practices, and institutions focused on mental health and psychotherapy in Uganda. It compares the recent rise of a psy-dispositif in two very different settings: postwar northern Uganda, which has become a hub for international trauma interventions, and Kampala, the capital, where a small group of Ugandan psychotherapists has established a number of private practices, which mainly cater to the (upper) middle classes. The article investigates the meanings of happiness and suffering in these different contexts and asks who seeks psychotherapy and why. It shows how in the context of novel discourses on mental health, and related to changing lifestyles and images of the self, new struggles to be happy are taking place, albeit in very class-and place-specific ways. Consequently, unhappiness and psychosocial suffering are becoming reasons for seeking therapy, at least for some. Such a medicalization of unhappiness, manifested most prominently in the popular idiom of depression, reflects a global trend and has led to the soaring consumption of antidepressants and rising popularity of psychotherapy, particularly in the United States. As such, this article seeks to make a contribution to recent anthropological debates on happiness, suffering, and global mental health.