Spirit Mediumship and Mental Health: Therapeutic Self-transformation Among Dang-kis in Singapore

While some early studies suggested that spirit mediums were psychiatrically ill individuals who found a culturally sanctioned role, subsequent work has found that they are generally in good physical and mental health. While the calling to be a healer often involves an initiatory illness, practitioners go on to play demanding social roles, suggesting that involvement in mediumship may be therapeutic for the practitioner. This study focuses on dang-ki healing, a form of Chinese spirit mediumship practiced in Singapore to explore whether participation in dang-ki healing is therapeutic for the mediums. We interviewed eight dang-kis from five temples about their life trajectories and assessed their mental health status with standardized psychological questionnaires. Most of the dang-kis did not appear to suffer from clinically significant emotional distress. Their narratives suggest that involvement in dang-ki mediumship may have therapeutic effects in which the embodied experience of self plays a central role. The dang-kis experienced changes in social identity, bodily experiences during spirit possession, and their overall sense of self through recurrent possession rituals. In general, the practice of spirit mediumship illustrates how the experiences and meanings of the self are constructed and reconstructed through body-world relations in ways that may confer a sense of wellness and social efficacy.