This blog contains different social phenomenon which are analyzed through the theories presented below.
“We blame society but we are society”
Ritual Healing Theory
Ritual Healing Theory explains the so called dissociative processes in which defined as “The splitting off of certain mental processes from the main body of consciousness with various degrees of autonomy.” (Hilgard, 1992) in form of unusual experiences such as trans, apparitions, paranormal dreams, out-of-body experiences (OBE), etc. created beliefs in spirits, souls, life after death and magical abilities. This belief became a foundation for shamanism and humankind’s first religious form. (McClenon, 1998). This theory is connected to our study in a way that the dissociative processes formed beliefs that are needed in creating the concept of traditional healing. Due to certain beliefs, rituals and practices, people formulated ideas which created folk medicines. They observed the bodies’ experiences or different responses which illnesses are not far from. Their different beliefs formed different ways of coping folk illnesses especially before the availability of modern medicines which created folk healers specifically, Albularyos.
Social Suffering Theory
Kleinman’s third social theory is that of social suffering, which provides a framework that holds four potentially useful implications for global health. First, that socioeconomic and sociopolitical forces can at times cause disease, as is the case with the structural violence of deep poverty creating the conditions for tuberculosis to flourish and for antibiotic resistance to develop. Second, that social institutions, such as health-care bureaucracies, that are developed to respond to suffering can make suffering worse. Examples of this are hospital-based medical errors or the failure of the US Veterans Administration clinics to adequately diagnose and treat the psychiatric trauma among soldiers returning from the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Third, social suffering conveys the idea that the pain and suffering of a disorder is not limited to the individual sufferer, but extends at times to the family and social network, as is the case when Alzheimer’s disease has created such serious cognitive impairment in the patient that he or she expresses no discomfort while the adult children experience deep loss and frustration. For global health programmes, the implication is that the family and network may also be in need of health interventions and are often influential in help seeking and adherence. Finally, the theory of social suffering collapses the historical distinction between what is a health problem and what is a social problem, by framing conditions that are both and that require both health and social policies, such as in urban slums and shantytowns where poverty, broken families, and a high risk of violence are also the settings where depression, suicide, post-traumatic stress disorder, and drug misuse cluster. Although there are clearly occasions when health policy and social policy have different targets, in the poorest of communities the medical, the economic, and the political may often be inseparable.
Albularyos Blog 