[Marital conflict in Senegal: an anguished plea from the women]

Conjugopathy partner relational problem in its systemic definition is a Western concept that is only partially applicable to situations encountered in Africa. A series of 10 women were carefully studied at the Psychiatric Clinic of the Fann University Hospital Center in Dakar. In the following article the authors give a detailed description of 3 of these cases and discuss several situations characteristic of African conjugopathy: preferential, forbidden and early marriage, endogamy, non-cohabitational conjugal life, polygyny, and individual psychic vulnerability. The fact that males do not acknowledge conjugal problems accounts for the exclusively female population in this study and explains the greater suffering of women in these situations. After having exhausted traditional avenues of recourse, African women turn to the hospital. Their symptoms reveal a rebellion against a society that stifles female expression. This repression favors clinical syndromes involving depression and/or psychosomatic manifestations.