Congenital malformation.

As in most neighboring countries and the world over, in Mozambique the birth of a child with congenital malformation often causes a feeling of guilty and becomes a reason for conflicts in marriages and families, and women become the major targets of accusations.

Because a clear sense of identity is a necessary condition for adequate mental functioning, malformation of identity leads to discomfort with one s self and social maladjustment, reaching clinical proportions among the more fragile of us. That is why the addition of madness to the roster of familiar mental illnesses coincided with the emergence of nationalism.