reinforces the most stigmatising explanation of divine punishment. Local ideas and exposition, born of relatedness, preserve the personhood of sick individuals so that, when people enter a period of healthy thinking, they can return readily to their lives and be seen as being well. The agency of t!volo and aspersions of deception to the individual who is ill preserve the possibility of an individual's return to a more appropriate personhood. Is this ultimately contributory to positive prognosis? In terms of local values in Vava’u, psychiatric interpretation does not reflect an act of tauhi vaha’a to those who are ill, but to a modernist ideal. People's actions explicitly question the effect on the quality of interaction between people when 'mental illness' is interpreted in these terms. The ramifications are more important than the apparent biological reality. Even in psychiatric terms, most events of mental illness are characterised by their periodicity or temporariness. However, while in local terms every episode may be the last, in psychiatric terms there is always likely to be another. Colloquialisation and humour To what extent is people’s avoidance of psychiatric interpretation a rejection of a modernist claim for knowledge and a denial of the inextricability of speaking and the evocation and attenuation of relatedness? The clearest indication is in the colloquialisation of terms and the humour with which the psychiatric explanations are regarded. In all the public presentations of Dr Puloka's translations I attended, some people broke into laughter. Those who were able to explain why it was funny explained either that it was peculiar to hear scientific concepts put into Tongan or that they found the metaphorical allusions, implied by some of the old Tongan words he used, hilarious. 1
1
'"vanga leke for example, the term that Dr Puloka uses to explain the condition of girls being depressed and staying in their rooms, may be used metaphorically to refer to the act of sex. People will say that they are ill and others will attribute it to '#vanga leke, with the implication that the person has been active sexually.
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