Christian prayer camps and healing churches

Domain XI · Traditional medicine & indigenous healing · Ghana and West Africa

What it is

This entry is not a therapy. It covers a living religious healing setting: Christian prayer camps and healing churches in Ghana and elsewhere in West Africa, and their counterparts in diaspora congregations. Human Rights Watch describes the Ghanaian camps as linked to Pentecostal churches and run…

Format

• No source sets phases or session counts for psychotherapy with clients connected to prayer camps or healing churches. The structure below is synthesis, built on the CFI's design and on the collaboration trials.
• Engagement and cultural assessment (sessions 1 to 2): core CFI, plus the Spirituality, Religion and Moral Traditions and Explanatory Model modules as needed. The APA states the modules can be given at first evaluation, later, or repeatedly. A time per CFI is. Field-trial clinicians found later…

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• State authority in Ghana: the Mental Health Act 2012 took effect in June 2012. It bars torture, cruelty, forced labour and other inhuman treatment of people with psychosocial disabilities, including shackling, and mandates the Mental Health Authority (MHA) to regulate non-orthodox healers in mental-health care. The Mental Health Regulation, 2019 (L.I. 2385) commenced on 19 July 2019; WHO-AIMS reports its full…

Evidence status, as the guide reports it

• Treatment and integration (ongoing, usual length for the presenting disorder): evidence-based treatment for the presenting problem, held within the client's religious frame where they wish. This includes making sense of healing experiences, family work and relapse planning.

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Is there physical contact? Was it explained beforehand, and do you feel free to say no or stop at any point?
• Does it involve any substance, plant preparation, remedy or supplement? Has your doctor or prescriber been told, especially about any medication you take?
• Does it involve fasting, a special diet or 'detox'? Have you discussed this with your doctor?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• dropout after a single visit; follow up proactively.
• sudden travel plans; a family member "going home for prayer" with no return date.
• brokers who hold strong views on deliverance or on psychiatry and steer you. Use more than one source.
• fear of spiritual consequences or family rejection if the client reports. Address these directly and plan for safety.
• re-traumatisation from locked doors, restraint in hospital, or enforced routines. Check before any inpatient admission.

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.