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Traditional Medicine in Health Care and Disease Management
Published in Amit Baran Sharangi, K. V. Peter, Medicinal Plants, 2023
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates about 4% of the world’s population die annually of different forms of diseases regardless of their level of civilization. Unhygienic practices, under-nutrition, poor communication, and lack of basic amenities like portable water, good roads keep communities worldwide in a perpetual state of risk and help to accelerate disease episodes. Traditional medicinal systems are widely accepted worldwide. The WHO has defined ethnomedicine as the indigenous knowledge, skills, and practices in different cultures (WHO, 2008). Among American traditional folk healers, herbal remedies, cupping, and leeching practices are common (Baxandall, Gordon, and Reverb, 1995). Bio-archeological and paleogenetic techniques assuredly became important tools for those who wish to write the history of disease from a global or long-term perspective, and were particularly important where manuscript and other documentary sources are fragmentary or ambiguous.
The performing arts in medicine and medical education
Published in Alan Bleakley, Routledge handbook of the medical humanities, 2019
This beneficent deception had its social politics. The status of folk healers was disputed in the ancient world as it is in the contemporary one. Elite rationalist Hippocratic corpus writers scoffed at the supernatural beliefs and remedies of traditional healers, terming them conjurers, purifactors, vagabonds and quacks (McNamara 2004).
Social and cultural influences
Published in Julie M Schirmer MSW, Alain J Montegut MD, Stephen J Spann MD, Gabriel Ivbijaro MD, Alfred Loh MD, Behavioral Medicine in Primary Care, 2017
Daniel L Meyer, Julie M Schirmer, Nguyen Minh Tam
Patients’ beliefs about disease causation help to guide their choice of healers. In many rural parts of the world, folk healers provide treatments that are more congruent with patients’ health beliefs, are located much closer to patients, and are usually less costly than the professional healers listed in Table 6.2.15 When entering different cultural contexts, healthcare practitioners should be aware of these local healing resources, and should reach out to them to better understand their beliefs and practices.
Latina young adults' use of health care during initial months in the United States
Published in Health Care for Women International, 2018
Frank R. Dillon, Melissa M. Ertl, Dylan A. Corp, Rosa Babino, Mario De La Rosa
We found that Latina young women differed in their utilization of health care depending on their endorsement of marianismo. Participants used health care services approximately three times more often when they more strongly endorsed the belief that women should be a source of strength in the family. This is consistent with previous findings that Latina immigrants in the US engage in healthy behaviors for their families’ wellness (McGlade et al., 2004). In contrast, those who more strongly endorsed the belief that women should silence themselves and respect the familial hierarchy were 64% less likely to use care. This behavior may reflect the cultural norm for Latina women to delay their own needs for the good of their family (Garcés et al., 2006). Similarly, greater endorsement of the belief that Latina women should be the spiritual pillars of the family related with 36% lower chance of health care usage. This link may be due to spiritually-inclined young women using home remedies, medications/herbs, or folk healers first or in lieu of conventional health care (Garcés et al., 2006; Mikhail, Wali, & Ziment, 2004; Wallace, Torres, Beltran, & Cohen-Boyar, 2014).
Traditional medicines and their common uses in central region of Syria: Hama and Homs – an ethnomedicinal survey
Published in Pharmaceutical Biology, 2021
Chadi Khatib, Abdulhakim Nattouf, Mohamad Isam Hasan Agha
The study area is considered one of the Syrian areas rich in medicinal plants. In the east of it there is a desert (badia), which is dominated by desert and thorny plants, and in the west of it, aromatic plants are spread in the mountains near the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. It is a fact that people in some of these rural areas suffer from poverty, so they depend a lot on folk remedies, and folk healers in these areas provide their expertise at small costs, because the medicinal herbs are cheaper than chemical medicines, and most of the medicinal recipes are available around. However, a large portion of the uses of medicinal plants mentioned in the research are still under study.
Mental health service-seeking behavior in post-Soviet Ukraine
Published in International Journal of Mental Health, 2023
Amanda Jiang, Rachel Ulrich, Kristin Van De Griend, Nathan Tintle, Mark McCarthy, Daniela A. Beckelhymer
Unsurprisingly, seeking treatment from non-formal and non-medical based healers was safer and more desirable than seeking state-approved treatment during the Soviet era (Yakushko, 2005). Alternative forms of treatment were rooted in spirituality and inextricably linked with community. Folk healers, known as babky, were (and still are) sought out predominantly by villagers to treat maladies that were considered untreatable by conventional Western medical practices. Common afflictions treated by babky included the evil eye, also recognized as “curses” or “spoiling” (Phillips, 2004). The victim of the evil eye may have had a wide range of mental and physical symptoms, including depression, weakness, headaches, and insomnia. Depending on the condition, the babky would have utilized alternative healing methods, such as rituals, herbal medicine, and massage, to cure ailments inflicted by the evil eye. Although many babky specialized in treating maladies not recognized by conventional medical practitioners (e.g. curses), some were adept at treating chronic, biomedical illnesses, such as problems of the spine, headaches, and stomach (Phillips, 2004). More than healers, babky were seen as confidants, listening and offering empathy to community members (Phillips, 2004). Like other religious practices, formal implementation of treatments based on energies and spirituality were strictly prohibited under Soviet control, and the majority of alternative healing was practiced in privacy (Yakushko, 2005). Unlike stigmas attached to “westernized” psychiatric treatment, however, traditional and religious healing—deeply rooted in rural life—withstood Soviet “revolutionary culture-making” with little alteration (Stites, 1988). Alternative treatments and many other rural practices persisted, albeit underground, despite Soviet attempts to re-fashion reality.1