This paper explores an ethnographic journey on the dynamics of perceptions and practices related to mental health care at a psychiatric hospital in Equatorial Guinea. The meanings of mental health and the practice of curing unfold within the localities of a psychiatric institution. Practice and medical ideologies of psychiatric care reveal knowledge, constructions, practices, intersections, and renovations of biomedical adoptions and concepts associated with progress, advancement, modernity, and global mental health movements. The hospital life and its agents’ perspectives on those receiving care reflect social and medical systems and socio-political contexts in Equatorial Guinea, as well as specific conflicts with medical traditions, religious practices, families, and the community. From reflexive anthropology, which points out my embodiment as an anthropologist, and preconceived concepts, this paper explores intrinsic relationships between medical anthropology and the institutional realms of psychiatric medicine in Equatorial Guinea to ultimately describe two main implications. The first implication relates to anthropology as a flexible and mysterious field or disciplinary enterprise. From the beginning of my entry into the field, I needed to meet with agents of institutional fields, introduce myself and the project, and maintain levels of contractual alliances. Lastly, this paper explores the role of critical and applied anthropology when identifying the challenges in mental health and opportunities for perceived impacts and beneficial changes.
