Social science & medicine (1982)
June 1, 2026
Eloïse Jaumier
Burnout has become a prevalent topic in both medical and public discourse, yet there remains little consensus on how it should be defined or addressed. Digital mental health technologies, especially mindfulness meditation apps like Headspace, position themselves as accessible responses to this condition. However, research in medical anthropology demonstrate that such technologies do not merely...
Social science & medicine (1982)
February 1, 2026
Sarah Kratina, Carol Strike, Robert Schwartz et al.
Psychedelic substances are recognized for their potential to ease psychological suffering linked to end-of-life issues, yet policy remains restrictive. The wide range of both substances and therapeutic approaches used in end-of-life populations has not been adequately covered by reviews to date. To identify and learn from the variety that exists within the research on therapeutic psychedelic...
Social science & medicine (1982)
November 19, 2025
Hanne Landgrebe Axelsen, Anna Glavind Müller, Lone Overby Fjorback et al.
The nationwide Stress-free Everyday Life for Children and Adolescents Research (SELFCARE) project, conducted from 2019 to 2020 in Denmark included a structured, three-part mindfulness-based teacher training program implemented over one year. The current study aimed to evaluate the teacher program's effectiveness on teachers' self-reported mental health 12 months post-baseline. In this...
Social science & medicine (1982)
August 1, 2025
Lise Juul, Morten Frydenberg, Emilie Hasager Bonde et al.
12 citations
This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a teacher-training program for integrating a ten-session, school-based mindfulness program into regular classroom instruction in Danish elementary schools. The focus was on the mental health of students in grades 4 to 9. The primary study population comprised at-risk students, with the total students serving as a secondary study population....
Social science & medicine (1982)
October 1, 2023
Alex K. Gearin
6 citations
Metaphors, analogies, and similes commonly appear in narratives of drinking the potent psychedelic "ayahuasca", presenting an intriguing transcultural pattern. Based upon survey and field research at an ayahuasca healing center in Pucallpa, Peru, the article investigates conceptual metaphors in narratives of ayahuasca experiences made by the visiting international guests. Bodily metaphors and...
Social science & medicine (1982)
September 1, 2021
Nicole Gombay, Gavin J Andrews
Based on autoethnography, this article adopts a (neuro)phenomenological lens to explore sensory experiences following a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Although focussing particularly on pain, vision, hearing, and somatic experiences connected with sleep, we also touch on how these are interwoven with other symptoms associated with TBIs. We use these experiences to enliven, and thereby enrich,...
Social science & medicine (1982)
October 1, 2019
Joanna Kempner, John Bailey
52 citations
Researchers across academia, government, and private industry increasingly value patient-led research for its ability to produce quick results from large samples of the population. This study examines the role played by self-experimentation in the production of health data collected in these projects. We ask: How does the collaborative context of online health communities, with their ability to...
Social science & medicine (1982)
August 1, 2012
Frank Neuner, Anett Pfeiffer, Elisabeth Schauer-Kaiser et al.
120 citations
Phenomena of spirit possession have been documented in many cultures. Some authors have argued that spirit possession is a type of psychopathology, and should be included as a category in diagnostic manuals of mental disorders. However, there are hardly any quantitative studies that report the prevalence of spirit possession on a population level and that provide evidence for its validity as a...
Social science & medicine (1982)
August 1, 2010
Victor Igreja, Beatrice Dias-Lambranca, Douglas A Hershey et al.
52 citations
In this article we assess the prevalence rates of harmful spirit possession, different features of the spirits and of their hosts, the correlates of the spirit possession experience, health patterns and the sources of health care consulted by possessed individuals in a population sample of 941 adults (255 men, 686 women) in post-civil war Mozambique in 2003-2004. A combined...
Social science & medicine (1982)
November 1995
D Rubens, D Gyurkovics, K Hornacek
Despite powerful opposition, natural medicine (NM) has achieved a toe-hold in the state-run biomedical system in the Slovak Republic. The physician-leader of the NM movement hopes to leverage his ministerial post as NM 'supreme expert' and his interlocking NM clinical and research facilities to achieve a complex, unified health care system under control of medical doctors. This health care...
Social science & medicine (1982)
February 1, 1994
L A Sharp
37 citations
For the Sakalava of northwest Madagascar, spirit possession and madness occupy opposing poles on a spectrum of experiences which, in indigenous terms, range from a good, powerful, and inescapable state to a destructive, dangerous, and frightening illness. While possession by the most powerful spirits is honorable and permanent, the excessive suffering that some mediums experience leads them to...
Social science & medicine (1982)
September 1992
G G Maskarinec
As a central feature of every ceremony, Nepali shamans (jhãkris) publicly recite lengthy oral texts, whose meticulous memorization constitutes the core of shamanic training. These texts include passages that explain the origins of diseases and afflictions, and provide elaborate instructions for their alleviation. Through a discursive analysis of key passages, I demonstrate that shamans possess...
Social science & medicine (1982)
May 1992
R R Desjarlais
To date, little attention has been paid to the cultural philosophies of experience which shape human behavior. The present paper contends that culturally constituted 'aesthetics' of everyday life underlies moments of health, illness and healing among Yolmo Sherpa of Helambu, Nepal. The author examines cultural understandings of bodily and social experience to show how implicit aesthetics--from...
Social science & medicine (1982)
1989
P B Zarrilli
This paper describes three interconnected conceptions of the body in kalarippayattu, the martial tradition of Kerala, South India. It traces continuities and discontinuities among concepts and practices recorded in classic source texts and contemporary martial practice for each of the three 'bodies of practice'. The first is the fluid body of humors and saps. The second is the body as...
Social science & medicine (1982)
1988
M M Steedly
18 citations
Karo Batak ceremonial curing practices in urban Indonesia take place in a disputed zone of acts and meanings, in which neither social nor cultural coherence can be presumed by the analyst. Examining the therapeutic efforts of an urban Karo spirit possession cult aimed at curing the soul loss suffered by a young man, the Christian son of one of the cult's premier spirit mediums, this paper...
Social science & medicine (1982)
1988
C Laderman
In comparing shamanistic healing with Western psychotherapy, the principal distinctions advanced by psychiatrists and psychologists have been: (1) that the shaman's patients receive 'remission without insight' while Western psychotherapy provides patients with a learning experience; and (2) that Western psychotherapy is based upon rational theory, whereas psychotherapeutic elements in...
Social science & medicine (1982)
1987
T J Csordas
46 citations
The difficulty of reconciling religious and medical dimensions of ethnopsychiatric phenomena is discussed with respect to spirit possession cults. The paper documents a trend toward medicalization of the phenomenon in the Anglo-American literature, and points out the lack of such a trend in the French literature. Extended discussion is presented of the Afro-Brazilian candomblé, a cult not well...
Social science & medicine (1982)
1987
M M Balzer
Siberian shamanism has roots in hunting traditions, kinship organization and soul beliefs which have changed under Soviet rule. Aspects of shamanic epistemology and curing survive, although native medical logic sometimes clashes with modern positivist medicine. Assumptions behind Siberian, particularly Khanty, shamanism are examined through analysis of training, seances and cosmology. The...
Social science & medicine (1982)
1986
J S Levin, J Coreil
This paper provides a conceptual overview of the 'New Age' phenomenon and of 'New age healing,' concepts which have gone virtually unaddressed in social science research, health-related or otherwise. First, drawing upon diverse sources, the authors attempt to define 'New age,' after which they discuss those medical, spiritual, and sociocultural developments which help account for the rise of...
Social science & medicine (1982)
1985
M R Woodward
29 citations
Javanese traditional medicine is based on Sufi Muslim notions of personhood, knowledge and magical power. This world view motivates two conflicting modalities of medical practice: one based on the magic powers of curers (dukun), the others on the religiously validated powers of Sufi saints. The association of magical and bio-medical knowledge allows Javanese to interpret traditional and...
Social science & medicine (1982)
1985
P Constantinides
29 citations
Sexual segregation and sexual asymmetry are prominent features of Northern Sudanese society. Women's sexuality and fertility are powerful and polluting, carrying with them the danger of dishonor and needing to be controlled and directed to their 'proper' social ends by men. Men pay for their daughters' infibulation, retain the right to dispose of them in marriage, honour their wives after...
Social science & medicine (1982)
1985
A Morinis
The saintly madman is a familiar character in South Asia. To outer appearances he is no different from a lunatic, but the mad saint comes to be revered because his idiocy is popularly believed to arise from a different cause than ordinary madness. The common psychopath neglects social conventions because his consciousness is dimmed by incapacity; the saintly madman also breaches convention, but...
Social science & medicine (1982)
1984
W J Karim
13 citations
This paper attempts to analyse professional rivalry and dissonance amongst traditional Malay midwives (bidan kampung) in the Northwest areas of Peninsular Malaysia. It elucidates how techniques of symbolic and ritual communication are carefully monitored by these female specialists, to develop regular clientele and professional credibility over time. However, since an integral element of Malay...