Community Mental Health Journal
May 2021
Tony V Pham, Rishav Koirala, Milton L Wainberg et al.
In this Fresh Focus, we reassess what the mental health treatment gap may mean if we consider the role of traditional healing. Based on systematic reviews, patients can use traditional healers and qualitatively report improvement from general psychological distress and symptom reduction for common mental disorders. Given these clinical implications, some high-income countries have scaled up...
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry
March 1, 2021
Tony V Pham, Bonnie N. Kaiser, Rishav Koirala et al.
Despite extensive ethnographic and qualitative research on traditional healers in Nepal, the role of traditional healers in relation to mental health has not been synthesized. We focused on the following clinically based research question, "What are the processes by which Nepali traditional healers address mental well-being?" We adopted a scoping review methodology to maximize the available...
International journal of mental health systems
January 7, 2021
Tony V Pham, Rishav Koirala, Brandon A Kohrt
There is increasing access to mental health services in biomedical settings (e.g., primary care and specialty clinics) in low- and middle-income countries. Traditional healing continues to be widely available and used in these settings as well. Our goal was to explore how the general public, traditional healers, and biomedical clinicians perceive the different types of services and make...
Ethos
March 2020
Tony V Pham, Rishav Koirala, Brandon A Kohrt
To explore the relationship between traditional healers and conventional psychotherapy, we conducted a combined ethnographic study and structured observational rating of healers in the middle hill region of central Nepal. We conducted in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations of healing with 84 participants comprising 29 traditional healers and 55 other community members. Overall, our...
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry
September 1, 2012
Nayla M. Khoury, Bonnie N. Kaiser, Hunter M. Keys et al.
100 citations
Vodou as an explanatory framework for illness has been considered an impediment to biomedical psychiatric treatment in rural Haiti by some scholars and Haitian professionals. According to this perspective, attribution of mental illness to supernatural possession drives individuals to seek care from houngan -s (Vodou priests) and other folk practitioners, rather than physicians, psychologists,...