RESUMO
In the last two decades anthropologists have begun to carry out studies in tropical medicine and health scientists have followed with the use of qualitative methods and techniques that represent a more person-centered view of planning control programmes. This paper is an overview of selected works by anthropologists and others that suggest the effectiveness of anthropological methodology.
Assuntos
Antropologia Cultural/métodos , Controle de Doenças Transmissíveis/métodos , Participação da Comunidade , Comportamentos Relacionados com a Saúde , Medicina Tropical/métodos , Cognição , Relações Comunidade-Instituição , Comportamento Cooperativo , Planejamento em Saúde/métodos , Humanos , Modelos BiológicosRESUMO
This paper explores the effect of a popular diagnosis of distress, "bewitchment," on diagnosis, treatment and outcomes of psychiatric illness in a small group of Hispanic patients in New Mexico. Two major approaches to such "culture-bound" illnesses in clinical settings are critiqued and synthesized in suggesting a practical way to understand how both folk and psychiatric explanations can affect experience with, and of psychiatric patients who present with their own culturally patterned diagnoses. Further study suggests that clinically focused ethnography can address the issue of change or persistence in both lay and clinical explanations of illness as they interact in a clinical setting.
Assuntos
Comparação Transcultural , Hispânico ou Latino/psicologia , Magia , Medicina Tradicional , Transtornos Mentais/psicologia , Transtornos Psicofisiológicos/psicologia , Adulto , Humanos , Masculino , Transtornos Mentais/diagnóstico , Cura Mental , México/etnologia , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , New Mexico , Transtornos Psicofisiológicos/diagnósticoRESUMO
Analyses of case materials describe variations in the experiences of Puerto Rican women diagnosed as having an anxiety disorder, in treatment with mental health clinicians, physicians, or traditional healers. Their common complaints are examined as core symbolic elements in culturally patterned complexes of meanings focused around personal trauma, stressful life events, personal and social reactions, expectations about treatment, and the course of illness. Many of these women report themselves to be "nervous," to be "sick from nerves," or to have had an "ataque de nervios." "Nervousness" is the base symbolic domain in Puerto Rico of what psychiatry labels "anxiety disorder," although it is also a common complaint of many disorders. What "nervousness" means to patients/clients and their clinicians or healers is examined within the frames of multilayered popular and biomedical interpretations. The special difficulties of women in Puerto Rico are highlighted, and psychiatric and ethnopsychological (Spiritist) models of etiology and treatment are compared.