Off a drab main road in Tottenham, north London, Paul Adu conductsbusiness from a small back office. As befits a businessman, he wearsa smart suit and a rather nice tie, and he monitors the front shopvia the CCTV screen installed in the corner.
But the ordinariness ends there. His desk is decorated with alarge magic circle. Its red and black symbols, he reveals matter-of-factly, are splattered with dove's blood - to protect against evil -and small, regular hillocks of wax from a ring of dripping candles.
The office is strewn with ouija boards, tarot cards and anunnerving little brass skull. Two "magic wands" lie on the table anda red, hooded robe hanging in the corner suggests that Mr Aduoccasionally slips out of his suit into something more comfortable.The oddness continues in the front of the New Guardian Light shop,with a bewildering array of paraphernalia associated with New Age,voodoo - even the Christian religion. Beneath posters of AmericanIndian "commandments" and Christian crucifixes, the shop's shelvesheave with Jinx Killer spray - in aerosol or powder - a range ofpotions which promise to lure unfaithful partners back home, and"evil eye" oils through which the purchaser can "control" otherpeople. Most macabre are the "hexing kits", containing graveyarddirt and rusting coffin nails, sitting right alongside the holywater.This spooky establishment might astonish - even terrify - theunsuspecting shopper. But according to Mr Adu, scores of peopletroop through the front shop and into his back office every weeklooking for spiritual comfort, and protection from curses and evilspells. The public offer of such services is rare - they are usuallydispensed from a private home - but other establishments claim thesame popularity.Business certainly seems healthy at the New Guardian Light, whichhas been operating for15 years. Every week Mr Adu, who has adoptedthe title "professor" without the inconvenience of requiring theusual degrees, places prominent advertisements in the black pressoffering help with love, luck and success, as well as spiritualhealing and the removal of curses from both body and home. He isever ready, reachable on land-line and mobile, freephone and fax, andeven at his dedicated Internet website. Adverts warn punters to havecredit cards ready.What this spiritual junkyard has in common with the respectedMaudsley psychiatric hospital in south London is not immediatelyobvious. But researchers may soon be beating a path to the doors ofoutfits like this. For the Maudsley has secured pounds 115,000 fromthe Government to investigate why black people take so long to seekNHS treatment for mental health problems. Edwin Gwenzi, a researchfellow at the hospital, is charged with testing the specifichypothesis that black people turn first to alternative medicine -including traditional African healing, voodoo and witchcraft.With a disproportionate number of black people in psychiatric carein Britain, and a particularly large number diagnosed asschizophrenic, there is already bitter controversy over whethermental health statistics reflect real rates of black mental illness,or the system's racial prejudice. The suggestion that blacks may beattending traditional healers in significant numbers (the propositionis even more insulting to blacks if the more culturally loaded term"witch doctor" figures) promises to add more gunpowder to an alreadyexplosive mix.Though Mr Gwenzi claims that among people of African and Afro-Caribbean descent there is widespread belief in supernatural powers,and a strong conviction that mental illness is caused by bad spirits,no one knows how many blacks use traditional healers or witchdoctors, or how common such services are in Britain.In Mr Adu's shop only one punter - a middle-aged black man - iswaiting for a consultation. But Mr Adu claims that among a smallarmy of clients, he deals with three or four mentally ill or"spiritually disturbed" people a week. They generally believe thatthey are possessed by an evil spirit. It is an explanation hereadily buys. For though Mr Adu was born in Chicago, he was raisedmainly in Nigeria where his grandfather, a traditional healer, passedon to him the gift of the "third eye". The ravings of the mentallyill - and the voices many hear - simply reinforce his belief in aspirit world.The problem with hospitals, he insists, is that they ignore thespiritual dimension to mental illness."I have clients who have run away from hospitals because all thedoctors did was restrain, and dispense tablets," he says. "Myclients just ended up sleeping all the time."I try to establish if a person's disturbance is connected to(illegal) drugs or to voodoo or some bad spell," he says earnestly.He offers exorcism at a flat rate of pounds 150 at his "personaltemple", at a nearby but secret location specially cleansed andblessed by him. After he "compels" the bad spirit out of a client -it can take hours of incantations and chants - he throws in apersonal guiding spirit to protect the newly healed from furtherharm. "You do not wash a plate and then leave it out to get dirtyagain," he says.Dr Trevor Turner, a consultant psychiatrist in Hackney, eastLondon, says that there is no doubt that black patients presentthemselves late to the NHS, often when their condition is alreadychronic. Sometimes, cultural misunderstanding is partly to blame, hesays. He remembers a patient who came into NHS care only two yearsafter he'd begun calling himself the King of Hackney. The man, aRastafarian, appears to have slipped through the mental health netbecause professionals left too much to cultural difference. Hisschizophrenia became a problem only when he - understandably, as theKing of Hackney - refused to pay his rent.But Dr Turner says evidence regularly surfaces that belief systems- sometimes encompassing witchcraft and intense evangelicalChristianity - also contribute to the delay in seeking conventionalmedical help. "About four years ago we had a patient brought to usin chains," he says. "Apparently he had been chained to a churchaltar during some sort of exorcism." An exorcism has even beenperformed on the ward. "The patient got better afterwards," he says."But the improvement also coincided with the drugs kicking in."Dr Turner welcomes the Maudsley study but would also be interestedin an investigation into all pathways to the psychiatric ward,whether patients are black or white. For all sections of thecommunity, he says, psychiatric services are a last resort, thoughdelays among blacks are admittedly longest.For whites who may snigger at blacks seeking comfort intraditional healers, he and other psychiatrists say they are not thatdifferent from disturbed middle-class whites who first seek outcounsellors and homeopaths - and even feng shui experts, to comeround and rearrange the furniture to unblock thwarted energy.But that does not comfort those who believe Mr Gwenzi's hypothesisis a diversion. Dr David Ndegwa, a forensic psychiatrist in Lambeth,south London, suspects that black aversion to NHS therapy may have asimpler cause - sheer terror of what the mental health system does toblacks. The reality of mental hospitals in London and other innercities, he says, is "locked wards full of black people supervised bywhite doctors"."It is a brave black man who goes to his white GP and tells him hehas a mental health problem," says Dr Ndegwa. For the statisticsshow that black patients are more likely to be coerced into hospital,to be diagnosed as schizophrenic and thereafter to be more heavilydrugged than whites. Dr Ndegwa claims that misclassification is toblame for the disproportionate numbers of "schizophrenic" blacks.That is a fiercely contested claim. "I come across black patientswho have been wrongly classified all the time," he insists.He even questions the basic assumption that for blacks with mentalhealth problems an NHS hospital is the best place to be. Fear andalienation, he says, have lead blacks to develop their own networks,the chief of which is the church.Mr Ndegwa does not say that black people do not attend traditionalhealers. "I knew some of my patients were seeing these people, butit is a difficult thing to confirm," he says. "It is a very secretworld." But he says he will be highly surprised if the Maudsleystudy concludes that voodoo and witchcraft are being widely used asalternatives to the NHS.Angela, a young black woman who prefers to remain anonymous, saysthat blacks with mental health problems are terrified of the NHS.But, she says, they generally place their faith in God, not voodoo.A few years ago her boyfriend was prescribed heavy medication byhis GP after complaining of anxiety. No counselling was everoffered. She persuaded him to throw away the tablets and turn to thechurch. One year and many prayer sessions later, he was better.Many young black men, she says, suffer mental distress because ofunemployment and racial discrimination.Trevor Minto, who runs a mental-health support group in BasallHeath, Birmingham agrees. "Distrust is the main reason for the delayin seeking NHS help," he says. "Black people just know they aregoing to be incarcerated or detained."
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