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Naturalistic theory: Illness is due to an impersonal factor, e.g., pathogen, malnutrition, obstruction (e.g., kidney stone), or organic deterioration (e.g., heart failure).Psychotherapists are interested in the role emotions play in physical health. For many living in Latin American countries, anxiety or fright may cause lethargy and distraction, an illness called susto. Emotionalistic disease theory: Illness is due to a negative emotional experience.Healers must use supernatural means to learn the cause and to help cure illness. Personalistic disease theory: Illness is due to the action of an agent such as a witch, sorcerer, or supernatural entity, e.g., ancestor spirit or ghost.Health systems include cultural perceptions and classification of health-related issues, healing practices, diagnosis, prevention, and healers (Miller 2011).Īnthropologists George Foster and Barbara Anderson, who together with Khwaja Hassan, established the field of medical anthropology, identified three disease theory systems that explain illness: Illness may be caused by disease, but it can also be caused by psychological or spiritual factors and tied to an individual’s worldview. Illness is a feeling or perception of not being healthy. These can vary by group (e.g., ethnicity and socioeconomic status), geography, incidence, and severity. Disease is a condition caused by a pathogen, e.g., bacterium, parasite, or virus, which has been scientifically verified it is something that can be objectively measured. Perhaps the broadest definition of health is that proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO), defining health with reference to an “overall sense of well-being.” By WHO’s criteria, only a relatively small percentage of the world’s population could be classified as healthy (Glazier and Hallin 2010: 925).ĭisease and illness are separate concepts. In order to understand the anthropological approach to health and illness, it is necessary to know the definitions of terms related to the topics.Īll definitions of health are imbued with moral, ethical, and political implications. In recent years, Western medical practitioners are beginning to use anthropological data to better understand their multicultural patients’ responses to “modern” health care practices. For decades, anthropologists have been studying the interaction of cultural values and norms on health-related issues.
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Applied anthropologists are found in many areas of work, including public health, economic development, forensics, linguistics, and human rights, in both rural and urban settings across the globe. Applied anthropologists use anthropological research methods and results to “identify, assess, and solve contemporary problems” (Gezen and Kottak 2014: 240).
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Some would classify it as part of applied anthropology. It is one of the fastest growing research areas within anthropology. Medical anthropology is the research area within cultural anthropology that marries concepts from biological and cultural anthropology to better understand health and disease among humans.
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Health system theories: ecological/epidemiological, interpretivist, critical medical anthropology.Disease theories: personalistic, naturalistic, emotionalistic.Army - MEDRETE in the Bac Ninh Province of Vietnam.