MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Medical Anthropology studies human health problems and healing
systems in their broad social and cultural contexts.
Medical anthropology
• Medical Anthropology is a subfield of anthropology.
• It deals with understanding the factors which influence:
1. Health and well being
2. The experience and distribution of illness
3. The prevention and treatment of sickness
4. Healing processes
5. Social relations of therapy management
6. The cultural importance and utilization of pluralistic medical
systems.
Cont…
• Medical anthropology is the study of how health and illness are:
• Shaped
• Experienced
• & understood in the context of:
• Cultural forces
• Historical forces
• Political forces
• Medical Anthropology examines how health and well-being are socially and
culturally constituted in comparative and transnational contexts and the
ways in which culture influences the experience of illness.
How culture influences experience of
illness???
• Cultural health beliefs affect how people think and feel about their health
and health problems, when and from whom they seek health care, and
how they respond to recommendations for lifestyle change, health-care
interventions, and treatment adherence.
• Cultural meanings of illness have real consequences in terms of whether
people are motivated to seek treatment, how they cope with their
symptoms, how supportive their families and communities are, where
they seek help (mental health specialist, primary care provider, clergy,
and/or traditional healer)
Cont…
What is health?
Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and
not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
Cont…
• Study of Health and illness under the umbrella of the discipline of
Anthropology involves exploration of:
• How close relationships of human beings get influenced by the health
condition of a person or vice versa…
Really???
• YES, Research results show that “Adults who are more socially
connected are healthier and live longer than their more isolated peers.”
Recent studies by medical anthropologist..
• Recent examples of the kinds of studies undertaken by medical
anthropologists include:
• Research into the impact of AIDS on Central African societies.
• The consequences of the traumas of war on families in Sri Lanka and
Guatemala.
Cont…
• Building a Culture of Health requires action in four key areas – a
shared value for health, cross sector collaboration, healthier and
more equitable communities, and integration of health services and
systems
Medical anthropologists study such
issues as:
• Popular health culture versus domestic health care practice
• Perceptions of Risk & Vulnerability
• Responsibility for illness
• Health care
• Preventative health and harm reduction practices
• The use and interpretation of pharmaceuticals and forms of
biotechnology
• The political economy of health care provision
Ethnomedicine
• Ethnomedicine is a society's cultural knowledge about the
management of health and treatments for illness, sickness, and
disease.
• This includes the culturally appropriate process for seeking health
care
• The culturally defined signs and symptoms of illness that raise a
health concern.
