We used to live in Kenya & Uganda. While there I saw a kid with a white circle painted around one eye. He had been to the witchdoctor and had received the ‘treatment’ for headache.
Another time we treated an infant with severely bleeding gums. The mother had taken the child to the witchdoctor, complaining that the child was crying, feverish, irritable and not nursing (i.e., teething). The witchdoctor said, “Ah, there is a disease going around. For two chickens, I will cure the child.”
His solution was to dig out the eye (canine) teeth “buds” (they had not erupted yet) using a sharpened bicycle spoke as his scalpel. Thankfully, our nurse had an ampule of adrenalin which stopped the bleeding. We almost had to restrain the nurse from beating the mother with a stick. No telling what she would have done to the witchdoctor.
Our Western psychiatric witchdoctors sometimes do far more harm than their African counterparts.
The aftermath of this tragedy is generating an important discussion on the subject of mental illness. If I may, I would point out to you that your sweeping generalization of psychiatrist/psychologist = witchdoctor will not help us get anywhere, other than a caution that, yes, drugs are potent and have the capacity to inflict harm rather than benefit. But I hope adults can look at this subject in terms of specifics, including personal anecdotes & studies, to help us grapple with the crux of this tragedy.