Page 13 - NAMAH Oct 2015
P. 13
Namah Knowledge frameworks in medicine and health
be adversely influenced by the subtle-bodies times it feels as if we must cross the cultural
of ancestors if prayers for the deceased are chasms between our own (Western) under-
not performed. Some of us in the West may standing of health and indigenous wisdoms.
find it difficult to accept the presence of The psychiatrist and anthropologist, Arthur
different types of vision, let alone different Kleinman wrote:
types of presence. It may be that medical and
healthcare staff are culturally aware of subtle “If you can’t see that your own culture has
perceptions but may not mention this to their its own sets of interests, emotions, and biases,
colleagues in Western clinical settings. In how can you expect to deal successfully with
the West there is an assumption that only someone else’s culture?”(20).
post-natal experiences can influence
mental health. However the Indian model He suggests we communicate with each other
of mental health suggests a variety of to acknowledge different models of body, life,
different influences including pre-natal and health. Although allopathic bio-medicine
experiences, the role of planets, past lives, and clinical practice are powerful cultural
karma or spirit possession. beliefs, he claims social, religious or spiritual
beliefs are equally powerful.
Good practice across the paradigms
Plural frameworks of knowledge
Research is being done in the West by those
who cross paradigm boundaries. The neuro- The old underlying assumption was for
psychiatrist, Peter Fenwick conducted studies psychiatrists and psychologists to follow
on death bed phenomena (17). He undertook a Western system of knowledge. However,
research into ELEs and their impact on relatives this is changing now (21,22). Professionals
and friends. The underlying assumption was are realising that there is more than one
that these visionary experiences and presences framework for understanding humanity (23).
of deceased relatives were real and veridical Although, in the Western world, apart from
and appeared to ease the passage of death. transcultural psychiatrists and transpersonal
Also the physician, Dewi Rees, a medical psychologists, medical and healthcare staff
director of a UK hospice, studied bereaved tend to accept the dominance of a Western
people who experienced a sense of presence model of mental health.
of their deceased spouse. He said many
people found the experience helpful, as However, in India, I spoke to teachers of
though a continuing relationship existed philosophy who were intellectually frustrated
between the living and the dead (18). The because they had direct experience of working
London psychiatrist Russell Razzaque is within unequal hierarchies of knowledge:
also crossing boundaries with his new book they considered that a dominant Western
and research programme (19). model of colonial philosophy prevailed (24).
In Maharashtra, I interviewed Sri Gurudev
Crossing cultural chasms who felt the philosophy of psychology taught
in Indian universities was Western culture-
In the field of medicine and healthcare, some- bound:
13
