TITLE:
Proverbs and Psycho-Social Healthcare in Cameroon
AUTHORS:
Doreen Mekunda Bebe
KEYWORDS:
Healthcare, Therapy, Proverbs, Psycho-Social, Management, Proverbs, Cameroon, Indigenous Knowledge
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.14 No.7,
July
16,
2026
ABSTRACT: This study examines the therapeutic merits of proverbs, spanning mental, emotional, social, and spiritual dimensions—and demonstrates how proverbs exert meaningful psycho-social impact on human wellbeing. Cameroon, in the decades since independence, has navigated persistent healthcare challenges, relying predominantly on Western therapeutic frameworks to address patients’ psycho-social needs. Proverbs, as a verbal artistic product, encode indigenous knowledge capable of contributing lasting healthcare benefits. Drawing on 25 proverbs from Babila Fochang’s Wisdom of African Sages, this study employs a pluriversalist framework to interrogate healthcare from an indigenous standpoint. Proverbs are foregrounded as the primary corpus because, despite their apparent simplicity, they carry profound meaning, cultural humour, and philosophical depth— qualities that render them effective psycho-social curatives. The study reveals that Western therapies need not constitute the exclusive response to psycho-social complications. Proverbs contain elements that can be systematically deployed to stabilize and enrich the health needs of psycho-social patients in Cameroon and beyond, as well as they possess therapeutic potential. By encoding themes of resilience, social support, identity, intergenerational responsibility, and moral guidance, proverbs may serve as cultural resources for psychological coping.