Alternative and traditional healing methods are common and popular in Sudan, particularly for treating people with mental disorders, but little information is available about the outcome of theses traditional healing approaches.
Compared with US or European countries, there are fewer mental health services for mothers of children with developmental disabilities in Latin American and/or Southeast Asian countries.
Patients having psychiatric diagnoses often experience high level of distress. Religiousness is often used by them as part of their coping mechanism and problem-solving strategies.
Previous studies examining body image from a cross-cultural perspective have tended to neglect samples from different ethnic groups or along a rural-urban continuum. To overcome this limitation, the present study examined positive body image among rural and urban women from three major indigenous ethnic groups in Sabah, Malaysia.
To determine the general characteristics of people with mental disorders in traditional healers centres in Sudan in terms of sociodemographic profile, common clinical presentations and diagnostic features, and to look at the treatment methods and intervention procedures used in these centres for treating people with mental illness.
The aims of this study were to examine the prevalence and severity of aggression in patients with first-episode psychosis and to identify the association between aggression and sociodemographic and clinical factors.
Previous studies have identified the significant role of stressful life events in the onset of depressive episodes. However, there is a paucity of cross-national studies on stressful life events that precede depression.
Remarkable improvements in economic conditions and a considerable upgrade in the quality of life have been observed in many parts of Asia during the past several decades. At the same time, many mental health challenges face the people of Asia. Various social mental health indexes are reviewed here, with available data from China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, and other Asian societies. The data are compared with data from the United States, Australia in the Pacific Rim, and some other Western countries to examine patterns of similarity or difference between East and West in the process of modernization. Common trends in mental health issues associated with rapid sociocultural change observed in different Asian societies are discussed, as well as the relative shortage of mental health personnel available in many Asian societies. It is emphasized that, in addition to expanding psychiatric services, there is an even more urgent need to promote mental health knowledge and concern through education in the general population. Mental health needs to be cultivated and maintained by social forces and cultural strengths. It is stressed that there is a challenge for Asian people to advance mental health beyond economic development in the 21st century.
The aim of this study is to explore the help-seeking behaviour of Malay psychiatric patients. A semi-structured interview based on a standard proforma was conducted to assess help seeking process and delays for Malay psychiatric patients attending the psychiatric clinic for the first time. Help-seeking process and delays were defined. Among 134 patients evaluated in the study, 69% had visited traditional healers (bomoh) for the present illness before consulting psychiatrists. The second popular choice of treatment was medical practitioner and only a small percentage of them had consulted homeopathic practitioners and herbalists. Patients who had consulted bomohs were significantly delayed in getting psychiatric treatment compared with those who had not consulted them. Consultation of bomohs was significantly higher among married patients, those with major psychiatric illnesses and in family who believed in supernatural causes of mental illness. However, there was no significant difference in age, gender, educational status and occupation between patients who had consulted and not consulted bomoh. We concluded that majority of the Malay psychiatric patients had sought the traditional treatment prior to psychiatric consultation. The strength of social support and the belief of the patients, friends, and/or relatives in supernatural causes of mental illness were strongly associated with the rate of traditional treatment. Deep-seated cultural beliefs were major barrier to psychiatric treatment.
Two groups of college students in Malaysia, ethnic Malay and ethnic Chinese, completed a mental illness attribution and help seeking questionnaire, and these responses were also compared with the responses of their mothers. As expected, ethnic Malays rated religious items, such as God and prayer, higher than the Chinese. However, both groups rated the social and psychological causes higher than religious, supernatural or physical causes. Contrary to our predictions, there were no intergenerational differences among either ethnic group. Medical pluralism was demonstrated, as a variety of apparently contradictory help seeking behaviors received quite high ratings including doctor/pharmacy, prayer, herbal medicine and traditional healers.
The patterns of health care seeking behavior of 1061 schizophrenics and the factors that affect the determination of the patterns were studied in 6 areas of 5 nations in east Asia: Hunan and Sichuan Provinces in China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines. The information was gathered through a structured questionnaire developed by the authors. The subjects generally favored psychiatry-oriented health care, but with frequent interruptions or combination with other types of managements. Most Japanese subjects sought care in western medicine, while subjects from Hunan, Sichuan and Korea alternated between western medicine and magicoreligious therapies or traditional herbal medicine. In the Philippines and Malaysia, the majority of the subjects sought magicoreligious therapies first, then later sought western psychiatric care. The choice of western psychiatric care was mostly influenced by the decision maker's knowledge and interpretation of the patient's illness. In determining the choice of management among various types of non-psychiatric management, cost, location, and societal attitudes played substantial roles as well as knowledge and interpretation. Suggestions and opinions were discussed to improve health care services for schizophrenic patients in each community.
This paper describes a rehabilitation programme for male chronic mental patients, with the aim of reintegrating them into the community. Since in Malaysia about 50% of the work force are stilling earning their living in the agricultural sector, the programme concentrates on training in farming and animal rearing. Since the patients are very institutionalised, resocialisation training is also provided that involves learning to communicate, to mix with others, to know how to use money, to make one's own demands, and to cope with more personal freedom. When a patient is trained well enough to be employed outside, a job is found for him that provides food, lodging and payment. After discharge from the hospital, he is regularly followed up by the social worker.
A pilot, field investigation of the prevalence and treatment of alcoholism in Southeast Asia (Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma, and Thailand) and conducted. The methodology combined an informant study, interviewing leading alcohol and drug abuse authorities; utilising existing data; and clinical and naturalistic observation. The effects of modernisation, multiracial culture, and the unilateral focus on opiates are discussed; recommendations on treatment, education, and research are presented.
The permainan puteri (usually abbreviated to main puteri) is an indigenous Kelantanese healing ceremony in which the bomoh (traditional medicine-man), the sick individual and other participants become spirit-medium through whom puteri (spirits) are able to enact a permainan ('play'). It has been successfully used as a psychotherapy for depression. The bomoh assisted by his minduk (master of spirits) and a troupe of musicians, is able to provide a conceptual framework around which the sick individual can organize his vague, mysterious and chaotic symptoms so that they become comprehensible and orderly. At the same time the bomoh is able to draw the sick individual out of his state of morbid self-absorption and heighten his feelings of self-worth. The involvement of his family, relatives and friends tends to enhance group solidarity and reintegrate the sick individual into his immediate social group.
There are many crucial determinants of the individual outcome and benefit of a university education including the stressful interplay of cultural and socioeconomic factors which are of growing importance in the inflationary 1970's. An epidemiological study of university students from 1969-1972 in Canada, 1973-1974 in Britain, and 1975 in Singapore, attempted to identify stresses leading to mental ill-health in these students. Singapore was chosen as an example of a culture bridging the developed Northern and developing Southern nations of the world. Cultural differences affecting the results of the study are discussed as is the role of social change.