Abstract
Outcome of 118 patients treated by shamans in Taipei, Taiwan, is compared with that of 112 roughly matched patients treated by physicians. Impressive among the chief findings at time of follow-up evaluation, more than three-fourths of patients in both groups across five distinctive sickness types perceived their health problems as improved and were so evaluated by the research staff. Patient attributions of source of threapeutic efficacy were more complex and ambivalent. Counter to our hypothesis a higher proportion of patients were dissatisfied with shamanistic treatment than with biomedical care, and this held true even for somatization patients with psychiatric problems. The findings are interpreted with respect to serious limitations on research design and methods that pertain to this and, we believe, any other study of indigenous healing. These limitations call into question certain of the findings in particular, and illustrate why assessments of therapeutic outcome, besides reflecting biological constraints, should be recognized as differential cultural construals of socially constructed reality.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Finkler, K. 1980/81 Non-Medical Treatments and Their Outcomes. Parts 1 and 2. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 4: 271–310, 5: 65–103.
Gale, J. L. 1975 Patient and Practitioner Attitudes Towards Traditional and Western Medicine in a Contemporary Chinese Setting. In Medicine in Chinese Culture, A. Kleinman, P. Kunstadter, E. R. Alexander, and J. L. Gale (eds.), Washington, D. C.: USGPO for Fogarty International Center, NIH; pp. 195–208.
Kleinman, A. and L. Sung 1976 Why Do Indigenous Practitioners Successfully Heal? Social Science and Medicine 13B:7–26.
Kleinman, A. 1980 Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kleinman, A. 1982 Neurasthenia and Depression: A Study of Somatization and Culture in China. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 6: 117–190.
Ness, R. 1980 The Impact of Indigenous Healing Activity, an Empirical Study of Two Fundamentalist Churches. Social Science and Medicine 14B: 107–180.
Young, A. 1977 Order, Analogy, and Efficacy in Amhara Medical Divination. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 1: 183–199.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kleinman, A., Gale, J.L. Patients treated by physicians and folk healers: A comparative outcome study in Taiwan. Cult Med Psych 6, 405–423 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00118886
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00118886