Cultural and Ethnic Stigma in Medicine Essay (Critical Writing)

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Medicine is an essential universal need irrespectively to the race, language, or any other social bias. Over the past decades, people have come to realize how these outer circumstances impact the development of various diseases. The science, which combines all these factors with the disease itself, is known as medical anthropology (Singer & Baer, 2007). For many years, Eastern practices of medicine and disease treatment seemed more of a misleading concept. That is why treatment practices from all over the world frequently face stigmatization or prejudiced attitude to their views on medicine. The real question is how the cultural and ethnic stigmatization can be eradicated in the way of effective disease prevention.

Western and Eastern cultures have always been different in terms of medicine approaches, whereas the latter was considered rather spiritual than actually beneficial. Eastern medical practice, for example, prioritizes human mental state, mindset, and natural resources are considered less harmful and more reliable if compared to the medications. While Eastern medical tradition fully integrates soul in the process of treatment, the representatives of Western culture have not been sure about this for quite a while (Bates, 2000). Such a cultural gap in terms of medicine creates a disastrous effect on the development of both medical branches. For instance, Paja Thao, a Hmong shaman who moved to the US, struggled a lot from the country’s unacceptance of his traditional approaches (Siegel, 2001). Another vivid example of the cultural gap is exposed in the story about a small kid with epilepsy who had been undergoing treatment in the USA. Meanwhile, her parents were sure that epilepsy attacks were a kind of spiritual connection and a natural gift a child was blessed to have (Fadiman, 1997). Such a culturally biased approach eventually led to a severe deterioration of the child’s condition.

Regarding this situation, one may conclude that as long as both Eastern and Western medical approaches contradict each other, they will always be stigmatized and criticized. The aforementioned cultures have some beneficial aspects in terms of healthcare. Thus, instead of spreading hatred and stigmas about each other, representatives of both approaches should come to symbiosis and establish the connection between factual and inner aspects of a human being.

References

Bates, D. G. (2000). Why Not Call Modern Medicine “Alternative”? Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 43(4), 502–518.

Fadiman, A. (1997). The spirit catches you and you fall down: A Hmong Child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Singer, M., Baer, H. A. (2007). Introducing Medical Anthropology: A discipline in action. Plymouth, The UK: AltaMira Press.

Siegel, T. (Director). (2001). [Video file]. Web.

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