Medicine Across Cultures

This work deals with the medical knowledge and beliefs of cultures outside of the United States and Europe. In addition to articles surveying Islamic, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Indian, Egyptian, and Tibetan medicine, the book includes essays on comparing Chinese and western medicine and religion and medicine. Each essay is well illustrated and contains an extensive bibliography.

As the United States population becomes increasingly diverse, the need for guidelines to assure competent healthcare among minorities becomes ever more urgent. Cross-Cultural Medicine provides important background information on various racial, ethnic, and cultural groups, their general health problems and risks, and spiritual and religious issues. Individual chapters are devoted to the special concerns of several groups: blacks and African Americans, Latinos, American Indians and Native Alaskans, Asian Americans, and Arab Americans and American Muslims. These chapters lay the foundation for exploring an individual's health beliefs and concerns in the context of his or her sociocultural experiences.

WHY WE MUST PRACTISE TRANSCULTURAL MEDICINE Health professionals and GPs should concern themselves with ethnicity, religion and culture as much as with the age, sex and social class of their patients. Transcultural medicine is the knowledge of medical and communication encounters between a doctor or health worker of one ethnic group and a patient of another. It embraces the physical, psychological and social aspects of care as well as the scientific aspects of culture, religion and ethnicity without getting involved in the politics of segregation or integration. English general practitioners and health professionals tend to regard everyone as English, and to assume that all patients have similar needs. Would that it were as simple as that! For economic reasons - based on supply and demand - the mass migration of working populations from the new Commonwealth countries, along with their dependent relatives (including their parents) to Britain took place during one decade - the 1960s. Broadly speaking, the workers were in their thirties and forties, and their dependent parents were in their fifties and sixties. All these will, of course, be 30 years older in the 1990s.

Geri-Ann Galanti argues that if the goal of the American medical system is to provide optimal care for all patients, health-care providers must understand cultural differences that create conflicts and misunderstandings and that can result in inferior medical care. This new edition includes five new chapters and 172 case studies of actual conflicts that occurred in American hospitals.

A classic comparative study of medicine and national culture, Medicine and Culture shows us that while doctors regard themselves as servants of science, they are often prisoners of custom.

Drawing vibrant connections between the colonization of whole nations, the health of the mountainsides and the abuse of individual women, children and men, Medicine Stories offers the paradigm of integrity as a political model to people who hunger for a world of justice, health and love.

Religiosity and spirituality (R/S) represent a very important factor of daily life for many individuals across different cultures and contexts. It is associated with lower rates of depression, suicide, mortality, and substance abuse, and is positively correlated with well-being and quality of life. Despite growing academic recognition and scientific literature on these connections this knowledge has not been translated into clinical practice. Part of the expanding Oxford Cultural Psychiatry series, Spirituality and Mental Health Across Cultures is a timely exploration of the implications of R/S on mental health. Written and edited by 38 experts in the fields of spirituality and mental health from 11 countries, covering a wide range of cultural and geographical perspectives, this unique resource assesses how mental health relates to world religions, agnosticism, atheism, and spiritualism unaffiliated with organised religion, with a practical touch. Across 25 chapters, this resource provides readers with a succinct and trustworthy review of the latest research and how this can be applied to clinical care. The first section covers the principles and fundamental questions that relate science, history, philosophy, neuroscience, religion, and spirituality with mental health. The second section discusses the main beliefs and practices related to world religions and their implications to mental health. The third reviews the impact of R/S on specific clinical situations and offers practical guidance on how to handle these appropriately, such as practical suggestions for assessing and integrating R/S in personal history anamnesis or psychotherapy.

Lupton′s newest edition of Medicine as Culture is more relevant than ever. Trudy Rudge, Professor of Nursing, University of Sydney A welcome update of a text that has become a mainstay of the medical sociologist′s library. Alan Radley, Emeritus Professor of Social Psychology, Loughborough University Medicine as Culture introduces students to a broad range of cross-disciplinary theoretical perspectives, using examples that emphasize bodies and visual images. Lupton′s core contrast between lay perspectives on illness and medical power is a useful beginning point for courses teaching health and illness from a socio-cultural perspective. Arthur Frank, Department of Sociology, University of Calgary Medicine as Culture is unlike any other sociological text on health and medicine. It combines perspectives drawn from a wide variety of disciplines including sociology, anthropology, social history, cultural geography, and media and cultural studies. The book explores the ways in which medicine and health care are sociocultural constructions, ranging from popular media and elite cultural representations of illness to the power dynamics of the doctor-patient relationship. The Third Edition has been updated to cover new areas of interest, including: - studies of space and place in relation to the body - actor-network theory as it is applied in research related to medicine - The internet and social media and how they contribute to lay health knowledge and patient support - complementary and alternative medicine - obesity and fat politics. Contextualising introductions and discussion points in every chapter makes Medicine as Culture, Third Edition a rigorous yet accessible text for students. Deborah Lupton is an independent sociologist and Honorary Associate in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Sydney.

The author concludes that medical decisions are often based on cultural biases and philosophies, suggesting a revaluation of American medical practices is warranted.

Death Across Cultures: Death and Dying in Non-Western Cultures, explores death practices and beliefs, before and after death, around the non-Western world. It includes chapters on countries in Africa, Asia, South America, as well as indigenous people in Australia and North America. These chapters address changes in death rituals and beliefs, medicalization and the industry of death, and the different ways cultures mediate the impacts of modernity. Comparative studies with the west and among countries are included. This book brings together global research conducted by anthropologists, social scientists and scholars who work closely with individuals from the cultures they are writing about.