Confusing culture for clinic: Indigenous shaman-healer as psychopathology

Abstract

My Master's thesis is an examination of the way in which anomalous behaviors commonly associated with indigenous shaman-healers might be associated with mental illness by western psychiatry. This out-dated western ethnocentric ideology is currently active as a diagnostic entry 3.8 Shamanic Crisis within the American Psychiatric Association's, 1994 Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV. The general cross-cultural descriptions of mental illness by mental health professionals in charge of the DSM-IV, have allowed such diagnoses to remain haphazardly confirmed by a western medical model, based on a non-universal, Euro-centric theories and definitions of disease. That lack of cross-cultural consideration within the Indian Health Service (IHS) has to change in order to provide quality professional care. My intent is to bolster a more cross-culturally sensitive view of these anomalous behaviors that does not fully support strict abnormal medical or physiological properties.