On a swelteringly hot day in 2009, a woman named Fatima walked down a dirt road toward a windowless shack on the outskirts of Mogadishu, Somalia.
She was holding the hand of her 17-year-old son, Abdi.
As they got closer to the shack, she kept squeezing his hand tighter and tighter because she was afraid. What she really wanted to do was turn around and run back home, but she knew she had to keep going because what awaited them inside that shack was her only chance to save her son’s life.
Fatima and her son continued walking down the road until they finally reached the shack. They walked around to the front, where a metal door blocked the entrance. Fatima took a deep breath to steady herself before raising her hand and knocking.
A few seconds later, a man opened the door. He greeted Fatima briefly, then looked at Abdi with a grim expression. Pointing at him, he asked, “Are you ready?”
Abdi didn’t answer. In fact, he didn’t even seem to notice the man. Instead, he stared blankly around the area, completely lost in his own thoughts.
Abdi had been a perfectly typical child, but over the past few years, he had begun acting very strangely. It started with unexplained nightmares and panic attacks. Then he became terrified whenever he heard a loud or sudden noise.
Most recently, he had begun slipping into disturbing mental states where he became extremely agitated, confused, and disoriented. During these episodes, he would lash out at anyone nearby and sometimes even try to hurt himself.
Sometimes his behavior became so violent that his mother had to tie him up for his own safety.
But Abdi was 17 years old—almost a grown man physically. It was becoming harder and harder for Fatima to restrain him, and she was growing increasingly frightened—not only for her own safety, but also for her son’s and everyone else’s.
Fatima had taken Abdi to every hospital in Mogadishu, but Somalia’s healthcare infrastructure had been devastated by more than two decades of civil war. The hospitals were severely underfunded, and many lacked adequately trained medical staff. They simply weren’t equipped to handle serious psychiatric illnesses, and none of them could help her son.
Fatima had seen other people with symptoms similar to Abdi’s. From watching what happened to them, she knew that without treatment, the outcomes were often heartbreaking.
Many were eventually chained to their beds inside locked rooms around the clock. Others were literally chained to trees and abandoned by families who could no longer care for them.
Fatima refused to let that happen to her son.
She was willing to do almost anything to save him.
For years, she had saved every bit of money she could to pay for one final treatment—the one inside this very shack.
It was incredibly expensive, but she believed it was their only hope.
The man stepped aside and motioned for them to enter. Nervously, Fatima led Abdi inside.
Once they were inside, the man carefully examined Abdi. While he did so, Fatima looked around the room.
She was surprised by how empty it was.
Aside from a single plastic chair sitting in the middle of the dirt floor, there was absolutely nothing inside.
Still, she assumed this was all part of the process.
After a few minutes, the man finished his examination and turned to Fatima.
“Your boy is in good physical condition,” he said. “We’re ready to begin.”
However, he explained that he would not personally perform the treatment.
Instead, it had to be carried out by a very specific kind of healer, who would remain inside the shack with Abdi overnight—possibly even for several nights—until whatever was causing his suffering had been removed.
Fatima nodded silently.
She pulled out an envelope filled with cash and handed it to the man.
Then she embraced her son tightly, telling him she would return as soon as the treatment was over.
Unable to bear staying any longer, she turned and walked away while the man left to fetch the healer.
Two days later, Fatima returned to the shack.
This time, she was hopeful.
She imagined seeing Abdi standing outside, smiling the way he used to before he became ill.
Instead, she saw only the same man sitting outside the shack.
When he noticed her approaching, he lowered his head and slowly shook it.
Panic surged through Fatima.
She ran toward him, screaming, “Where is my son? What happened?”
The man tried to stop her, but she pushed past him and burst through the door.
There, lying on the dirt floor, was Abdi.
His body had been brutally slashed and torn apart.
Before Fatima could even comprehend the horrifying sight before her, she heard high-pitched laughter echoing from somewhere behind her.
She turned toward the shadows.
Standing inside the shack was the healer responsible for what had happened to her son.
Fatima had desperately tried to find legitimate medical treatment, but when every attempt failed, desperation drove her toward an extremely dangerous form of traditional folk healing.
In some parts of Somalia, an old belief holds that mental illness is caused by possession by an evil spirit known as a jinn.
According to this belief, only a special healer has the ability to see the jinn and force it out of the afflicted person.
But the healer wasn’t a human being.
It was a wild hyena.
The treatment involved locking the afflicted person inside a small, enclosed room with the hyena for hours—or sometimes even days.
There are no reliable statistics showing how often this practice has occurred in Somalia.
However, it has happened often enough that numerous reports have documented patients being severely injured or killed, just as Abdi was.
Since 2013, a Somali nurse has led a major campaign to end this barbaric practice while expanding access to proper mental healthcare throughout Somalia.