11. Illness & Healing Flashcards
Medical anthropology?
A subfield of cultural anthropology that examines ideas about health, illness and healing
How can we view illness and health from a bicultural perspective? + What does it mean that illness must be contextualized?
Web of biological, social, and cultural values
Lead to people understanding of causes and experience of illness + ways to heal
Belief systems are important, provide an explanation to different vents
Examples of how US medical care tends to value more “aggressive” treatments?
Heights rate of drug prescription and dosage
High rate of surgical intervention
What do medical anthropologists want to know?
- Peoples ideas about health, disease, illness, rehabilitation and recovery
- How their bodies feel when they are sick
- How others treat the ill’
- Status and roles of practitioners
The understandings of how medicine or other medicines work - How being ill changes a person’s sense of self
- How communities support or create barriers to healing
- If people feel they have access to the resources they need when ill
Disease?
Diagnosis of clinically identifiable diagnoses that signify a certain set of symptoms and appropriate treatments
Illness? + example USA vs India
The set of social and cultural understandings that the community had about a particular set of symptoms
For example, schizophrenia hear different kinds of voices
USA, man, angry violent
India, kind, helpful, sometimes family member
Illness narrative?
The explanation of how a person understands and experiences an illness
personification
Metaphors
Cultural models
Example of how it’s easier to manage an illness when we conceptualize it?
Metaphors, battle, keep fighting, must win
Personification, Reciprocal relationship between the self and other entity
Personification?
The representation of an inanimate thin having human qualities. Giving an illness a name allows the sufferer to communicate and negotiate with it as a living thing
The two major causation why people believe they are ill?
Natural caustaion, biomedical
Supernatural causation, animistic and magical causes: powers, curses etc.
Biomedicine?
The field of medical care in which the scientific principles of biology, biochemistry, and physiology are applied to patient diagnosis and treatment
Localized medicine?
Specific cultural traditions, ex. TCM
Body equilibrium theories of causation:
Based on a balance. Example, humoral theory, TCM, Ayurvedic
What does Western biomedicine focus more and ess on?
More: Cures and interventions to eliminate disease
LEss: Nurturire and demonstrating empathy
Medicalization? + example
Turn regular biological or social problem into clinical medical concerns, which takes away much of the control for the person experiencing them
Example, childbirth and nursing, removed the agency of the mother and given it to the medical professionals
Complementary Alternative Medicine? (CAM)
Preventative, curative, and palliative care outside the biomedical system
Naturopathy?
Treatment for an illness that relies on non-pharmaceutical and non-surgical methods, like nutrition, herbal medicine, body work, and self-care
What is the result of that some countries merge CAM and biomedicine?
Government regulation means that the effectiveness can be monitored and controlled
Ethnomedicine?
A culture’s concepts, beliefs, and practices regarding health and healing
4 therapeutic processes that help the sick heal?
- Clinical therapeutic process, biomedicine
- Symbolic therapeutic process, rituals often using objects with a symbolic meaning
- Social support, strong and positive social network
- Persuasive process, convincing a patient they have received a treatment -> placebo
Humoral theory?
Humors (fluids) in the body must be in balance in order to achieve health
Homeostasis?
Internal workings of the body and mind correspond to an overall system of balance with the environment
How has the cultural model of homeostasis affected modern medicine today?
Eat a balanced diet, everything in moderation, cool washcloth on the forehead when feverish
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)?
A system of healing used in China that focuses on strengthening the body’s system and improving the flow of qi (life force)
What focus does TCM use to locate a disruption in a person’s qi?
Focus on understanding a patient’s body systems holistically (digestion, respiration, etc.), instead of focusing on individual symptoms
What is yin and yang and how can TCM create a balance between them?
Yin: dark, cold, moist, passive
Yang: light, hot, dry, energetic
Remedies of either yin or yang can be applied to restore balance
What does TCM take into account when looking into the Four Natures? (temperature balance of the body)
How the item grows: in the earth or air
Its “movement”: floating, sinking, lifting, lowering
The organ upon which it acts
Properties of yin or yang - > herbs or food classified as yin or yang may be prescribed to restore balance
TCM Five tastes?
Used to address certain organs or specific functions
TCM other treatments to restore the flow of qi?
Breathing exercises
Acupuncture
Cupping
Moxibustion, a burning stick of herb is placed near acupuncture points on the body
Ayurveda?
A system of healing used in India that focuses on restoration of balance to the body’s system
What kind of imbalances can trigger illness?
Individuals are connected to others in their community, the natural environment, and the universe. Imbalances in any of these systems
Ayurvedic practitioners assess imbalances in what in order to treat their patients?
Prakriti and doshas
What is Prakruti (constitution) made up of?
Vata, located primarily in the colon
Pitta, in the small intestine
Kapha, in the stomach
What is Doshas (qualities) based on?
The balance of the elements:
Wind air(space
Bile, fire
Phlegm, water/earth
What may the Ayurveda prescribe as treat meant?
Food and herbs have qualities that may provide something a patient is lacking + may also prescribe yoga postures, breathing and psychological work
Ayurveda Six Tastes?
Six Tastes each with qualities that connect to the doshas
Explanatory model?
A way of understanding the world, a description of how something functions
Structural violence?
How the social, economic, and political structures of society oppress and harm certain members, especially the poor
What kind of explanatory model do structural inequities often contribute to? + What does it lead to?
That the sick is to balance for their own failing health
- Laze bc unhealthy habits or reluctance to see a doctor
- Placing the blame on “choices” made by the ill, allows the root causes of structural violence to go unexamined
What is obesity among Latins mainly due to and what is the most effective response?
Structural barriers in society. The most effective response is structural, not personal
Critical medical anthropology?
The subfield of medical anthropology examines the idea of health in a larger social context. Taking into consideration: Structural limitations Varying socio.economic levels Ethnicity Culture GEographic areas - And all these links health to power
What can the act of “othering” lead to?
Essentially an act of prejudice that can lead to discrimination. Different from and therefore subordinate to the rest of the community
What questions will ethnographers ask when studying disabilities?
- Is there a concept of disability in the culture, what constitutes disabilities?
- How does culture indicate or promote the ways others should act towards a disabled person?
- How does society facilitate the function of persons with disabilities?
- Does the idea of disabilities lead to a concept of rehabilitation?
What is more important than the impairment itself in shaping a disabled person’s experience?
The way the community understands and responds to the impairment.
A divine gift that elevates one’s status is a curse that evokes negative responses
How is disability not the same as an illness itself?
Rehabilitation is not the same as initial treatment of disease
Many societies identify disabled people as different -> stigmatized, socially isolated