CLINICAL CASE STUDY URSULA STREIT, JEAN LEBLANC and ABDELWAHED MEKKI-BERRADA A MOROCCAN WOMAN SUFFERING FROM DEPRESSION: MIGRATION AS AN ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE SORCELLERIE ⋆ CLINICAL HISTORY Patient identification. B. is a 46 year-old single Moroccan woman who migrated to Eastern Canada in 1993. She lives alone and has received social welfare payments for four years, but she is now involved in a job development program financed by the Government. History of present illness. B. presented to a psychiatric outpatient clinic in her new neighborhood after being in psychotherapy for 18 months. This treatment had started in 1993, soon after she suffered a depressive crisis five months after her arrival in Canada. Her crisis developed in the follow- ing way: B. had been unable to find work and had been forced to end a relationship with a fellow countryman, so she wanted to return to Morocco. By chance, she met a Lebanese social worker at the YWCA where she had hoped to find an inexpensive place to stay before leaving. During the inter- view with the social worker, the patient started to cry and was unable to stop. The social worker referred her to a half-way house, where, for about two weeks, B. remained in a state of near total muteness and slept “all day.” Given her withdrawal and her crying spells, she was asked to consult a general practitioner, who referred her to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist, in turn, sent her to a community health center where she attended short- term group therapy (20 weeks). This treatment being insufficient, it was followed by individual psychotherapy for about one year. The interruption of that treatment, due to the departure of her therapist, coincided with B.’s move from the half-way house. The patient was told to seek further help at the psychiatric outpatient clinic of the neighborhood to which she had moved. ⋆ The term sorcellerie as used by the patient is difficult to translate, but its meaning may be approximated by the following: possession by jnun and use of magical methods, such as poisoning, curses, and charms. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 22: 445–463, 1998. © 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.