In "The Wisdom of Mental Illness," Jez Hughes—a shamanic practitioner and therapist based in the UK—makes a provocative and carefully argued case that what Western psychiatry labels as mental illness often contains within it a form of wisdom that our culture has lost the capacity to recognize. Hughes doesn't make the naive argument that all mental illness is really shamanic initiation or that people in psychiatric crisis don't need help. He makes the subtler and more clinically useful argument that within many experiences currently categorized as pathological, there are elements of genuine spiritual process, meaningful psychological transformation, and evolutionary potential that are being systematically destroyed by a treatment paradigm focused exclusively on symptom elimination.

Hughes writes from the unusual position of being both a trained shamanic practitioner—initiated in multiple indigenous traditions—and someone who works therapeutically with people in mental health crisis. This dual perspective allows him to see what specialists in either field alone might miss: the ways in which shamanic traditions' understanding of extreme states as potential initiatory crises maps onto the clinical reality of what people in psychiatric systems actually experience. For IMHU's community, this book provides a valuable shamanic lens on the questions the organization addresses—not as a replacement for clinical understanding but as a complement that illuminates dimensions of mental distress that purely medical models cannot see.

Hughes' central argument draws on a cross-cultural observation that anthropologists and transpersonal psychologists have noted for decades: in many indigenous cultures, the experiences that Western psychiatry treats as symptoms of mental illness are recognized as potential signs of a calling to become a healer, a seer, or a spiritual leader. The person who hears voices, who has visions, who enters states of consciousness radically different from the cultural norm isn't automatically considered sick. They're considered someone who has been touched by the spirit world—and the community's task isn't to suppress these experiences but to help the person learn to navigate them, understand them, and eventually use them in service to the community.

Hughes is careful to note that this shamanic perspective doesn't mean every person in a psychiatric ward is an unrecognized shaman. The relationship between shamanic calling and mental illness is more nuanced than that. Some people in extreme states are experiencing genuine spiritual emergence that needs support rather than suppression. Some are experiencing psychological crisis that needs skilled therapeutic intervention. Some are experiencing both simultaneously. And some are experiencing conditions—severe thought disorder, dangerous self-neglect, violent impulses—that require the safety nets that psychiatric care provides. The shamanic lens doesn't eliminate the need for clinical judgment. It expands the range of possibilities that clinical judgment considers, asking not just "what's wrong with this person?" but "what might be trying to emerge through this crisis, and how can we support that emergence while keeping the person safe?"

Hughes draws extensively on the shamanic understanding of initiation—the process by which a person's old identity is dismantled to make way for a new, expanded one—as a framework for understanding certain forms of mental health crisis. In shamanic traditions worldwide, the initiatory process typically involves a period of intense suffering, often including the symbolic or felt experience of death and dismemberment, followed by a rebirth into a new way of being that includes capacities and awareness the person didn't have before. This process is understood as necessary, meaningful, and ultimately beneficial—but it's also recognized as genuinely dangerous and in need of skilled support.

The parallels with certain psychiatric presentations are striking. People in acute psychotic episodes sometimes describe experiences that map directly onto the shamanic initiatory template: the feeling that their old self is dying, the encounter with overwhelming spiritual forces, the dissolution of previously stable identity structures, the sense that they're being taken apart and put back together differently. Hughes argues that when these experiences occur within a supportive cultural container that recognizes their potential meaning, they can resolve into genuine transformation. When they occur in a culture that has no framework for understanding them and responds with forced medication and hospitalization, the initiatory process is interrupted—the death occurs without the rebirth, leaving the person broken rather than transformed. This analysis doesn't apply to all psychiatric presentations, but for the subset it does apply to, it suggests that our current treatment approach may be causing harm by preventing a process that, properly supported, could lead to healing.

Hughes extends his analysis beyond individual experience to examine the cultural conditions that generate mental distress on a mass scale—an analysis that converges with Gabor Maté's work from a different direction. He argues that a culture severed from connection to nature, to community, to spiritual practice, and to the deeper dimensions of consciousness will inevitably produce epidemic levels of psychological suffering. Mental illness, in this view, isn't just an individual brain malfunction. It's partly a signal from the collective psyche that something has gone deeply wrong with how we're living—that the culture itself is sick, and individual breakdowns are symptoms of a systemic illness.

This cultural analysis has shamanic roots. In many indigenous worldviews, the health of individuals and the health of the community are inseparable. When the community loses its relationship with the spirit world, with the land, with the cycles of nature, its members become vulnerable to illness—not as punishment but as a natural consequence of disconnection from the sources of life and meaning. Hughes applies this understanding to modern Western societies and finds it disturbingly apt. The epidemic levels of depression, anxiety, addiction, and psychotic breakdown in affluent societies may reflect not just individual vulnerability but collective disconnection from the spiritual, relational, and ecological foundations of human wellbeing. If this analysis is even partially correct, then mental health care that focuses exclusively on individual treatment while leaving the pathogenic culture untouched will never be more than a bandage on a wound that keeps being reopened.

Hughes describes specific shamanic practices—soul retrieval, extraction, power animal retrieval, ancestral healing—and explores how they might complement conventional therapeutic approaches for people in mental health crisis. He's pragmatic rather than dogmatic about this: he doesn't claim that shamanic methods should replace psychiatric care, but he presents evidence from his own practice and from the growing body of research on shamanic healing that these methods can address dimensions of suffering that conventional treatment misses entirely.

Soul retrieval, for example—the shamanic practice of journeying to recover lost fragments of a person's essential self—addresses something that maps closely onto the clinical concept of dissociation. When a person has experienced trauma, parts of their vitality, creativity, and capacity for full engagement with life may split off as a protective response. Conventional therapy works to identify and process the trauma. Shamanic soul retrieval works to recover and reintegrate the lost parts directly. Hughes reports that the combination of both approaches often produces results that neither alone can achieve—the therapy provides the psychological framework for understanding what happened, while the shamanic work provides the energetic and spiritual restoration that makes full recovery possible. For IMHU, this complementary approach models the kind of integration between spiritual and clinical methods that the organization advocates for.

Hughes is honest about the limitations and risks of applying shamanic perspectives to mental health, and this honesty strengthens his argument considerably. He acknowledges that not all mental health crises contain initiatory potential—some reflect genuine neurological conditions that need medical treatment. He warns against the romanticization of mental illness that can occur when every episode of psychosis is reframed as a spiritual emergency. He addresses the risks of cultural appropriation when Western practitioners adopt indigenous practices without adequate training, relationship with source traditions, or understanding of the responsibilities these practices carry. And he notes that shamanic work itself can be destabilizing if practiced by people who aren't ready for it or guided by practitioners who aren't adequately trained.

These cautions frame Hughes' ultimate call: not for shamanism to replace psychiatry but for a genuine integration that draws on the wisdom of both traditions. Such an integration would include clinicians who are trained to recognize the potential spiritual dimensions of extreme states alongside their pathological features. It would include treatment settings that can provide both the safety of clinical care and the meaning-making resources of spiritual frameworks. It would include research programs that investigate shamanic healing methods with the same rigor applied to pharmaceutical interventions. And it would include a cultural shift that recognizes the potential wisdom in mental suffering rather than treating it exclusively as a malfunction to be corrected. For IMHU, Hughes' vision of integration aligns closely with the organization's mission—and his book provides a valuable shamanic perspective on why that integration matters, what it might look like, and what cautions must be observed along the way.