Ganja in Jamaica News |
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Hickling defies
the odds - UWI's head psychiatrist reflects on turbulent years at inaugural
lecture By Eulalee Thompson, Staff Reporter Jamaica Gleaner Saturday, March 31, 2001 DR. FREDDIE Hick-ling, the "unorthodox psychiatrist", whose revolutionary treatment methods at Bellevue Hospital made him an outcast among colleagues at the University of the West Indies (UWI) and in government, now holds the chair in psychiatry at that institution. Holding an exquisitely-carved walking stick, one of his new trademarks, and supported by revolutionary reggae music and multi-media technology, Dr. Hickling on Thursday recalled this turbulent period in his career during his inaugural (professorial) lecture at the UWI's Medical School. He said that his colleagues had told him that he would never teach at the UWI. He claimed that the press was trying, during that time, to make him out to be a madman. The lecture titled, "Psychohistoriography and the Challenge to the Episteme: The Legacy of Caribbean Scholarship in the development of Ethno-psychiatry" was well attended by the academic and medical communities, who listened attentively and gave him an extended standing ovation at the end of the nearly hour-long presentation. New concept It was Dr. Hickling, as Bellevue's Senior Medical Officer (SMO) in the 1970s and early 80s, who introduced a new concept of "cultural and work therapy" at the institution which had become accustomed to warehousing its mentally ill patients. As part of the therapy, a garden theatre was built on the hospital's compound and patients presented theatrical works, with titles such as "Mad Adaptations" and "Mad Irations", to which members of the public were invited. The patients also planted 4.5 acres of callaloo and maintained a chicken farm which they used to feed themselves and, in the spirit of self-reliance, earned income by selling these goods to customers in Kingston. Dr. Hickling was also the "dreadlocked" SMO who advocated the use of ganja as part of his treatment. He said that he was described then as the "the chief madman". Dr. Hickling spoke critically of Edward Seaga and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) who, he said, bulldozed Bellevue's garden theatre in the early 1980s but, in characteristic spirit, he had written a poem for Mr. Seaga. He said that Jamaica was in "deep denial" and making pictorial reference to Prime Minister P.J. Patterson when he introduced this theme, he played the popular song, "It Wasn't Me" by Shaggy. Fresh from a lecturing and consulting stint in Birmingham, England, Dr. Hickling, who is widely-published in academic journals, said that he will be doing much more research to understand the changing Jamaican psyche. au:thompson sc:jg dt:03/31/2001 |