Ethnomedical Best Practices for International Psychosocial Efforts in Disaster and Trauma

Abstract

Siddharth Shah examines ethnomedical practices for international psychosocial efforts in disaster and trauma. The author begins by defining ethnomedical competence and ethnomedicine as the study culturally embedded or alternative beliefs and practices for health care. Shah details how neocolonial, largely Western practices, have assumed the transportability and relevance to other cultures. Shah challenges the validity of such assumptions and argues for ethnomedical competence in which there are symmetrical learning processes that are democratic in nature. To illustrate his point, he presents a case history of the 2004 Tsunami in which he learned from a Sri Lankan colleague and spiritual healer named Ranjan, who employed traditional healing practices to aid victims of the disaster. Shah describes the spiritual healers' gifts and techniques and contrasts them with how modern psychiatry would have approached the distressed and traumatized victims of the flood waters. He notes that Ranjan's techniques were applied to wide ranges of psychological problems with clearly observable success which would likely be criticized by Western scientific standards as quackery. Shah goes on in this chapter to outline the evidence for shortcomings in ethnomedical competence and references recent efforts by the World Health Organization to create standards by which to assess the effectiveness of interventions in situations of extreme stress, disaster, and trauma. The author concludes his chapter with a set of guidelines to counteract neocolonial processes that might be counterproductive in non-Western cultures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved). (preface)