Cultural health beliefs.

Beliefs about the etiology of illness vary across cultures and therefore also the treatment offered. For example Chinese and Indian patients have beliefs that mental illness is caused by psychosocial forces and they therefore prefer treatments based on psychosocial practices. By contrast in the West the focus is on the individual patient consistent with cultural values. Cultural health beliefs among members of ethnic groups continue even after migration to countries that provide Western scientific medicine (Cook, 1994). In some parts of India fate or cosmic influence are believed responsible for illness. Such superstitious cultural health beliefs largely determine what people think can be done to cure or mitigate the impact on health (Dalal, Pande, 1999). Studies in Ethiopia (Mulatu, 2000) showed that some people believed that the cause for mental illness was supernatural spirit possession. These cultural thoughts have an obvious negative impact on the patient’s beliefs about their ability to control illness. Helplessness derived from cultural health beliefs make it difficult for the patient to recover from mental illness (Thoresen, 1999).

The effect of cultural beliefs about health can be observed in a study in India (Berry, Dalal, & Pande, 1994). The villagers in the study believed that a mother should eat little food to allow room for the fetus to grow. Such faulty beliefs about nutrition resulted in fetal malnutrition and many subsequent illnesses in the undernourished infants. Responsibility for health care are also to some degree based on cultural beliefs and associated ideologies. In the U.S. it is commonly believed that people should look after themselves as is typical in individualistic cultures. In Cuba on the other hand a public health system looks after all patients and is not based on the ability to pay. Clearly socio-economic status in individualistic societies is the primary factor as to whether a person has access to necessary treatment (Lynch & Kaplan, 1997).

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 976