Mental Health and Ethnicity/Race. Health, Medicine, Nursing Essay

Mental Health and Ethnicity
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Mental Health and Ethnicity
Ethnomedicinal knowledge has remained a significant contributor in the healthcare system, especially among Chinese Americans who are known for their expansive knowledge and preference for herbal medicine. Despite living in a vibrant and civilized Americans, many Asians still carry on with their ethnomedicinal practices to combat specific disorders such as mental illness, skin disorders, uremia, and other birth-related illnesses. Though Chinese Americans have sanctioned their cultural beliefs of mental disorders in the accurate identification of symptoms, and this often delays help-seeking until the situations become too severe.
According to the Chinese-Americans, ethnomedicine refers to a wide range of practices, beliefs, therapeutic techniques, and healthcare systems arising from indigenous cultural development. It involves studying how disease occurs, the meaning of a person’s signs and symptoms according to indigenous beliefs, the progress of the disease and who will manage the disease, how and in which way the disorder will be managed (Lu & Lu, 2014). Examples of ethnomedicine include Chinese medicine, which utilizes herbal therapy, acupuncture, and acupressure (Lu & Lu, 2014). Ayurvedic medicine helps in the restoration of a person’s harmony and cleansing their body using oils, laxatives, and massage. Other ethnomedical techniques include yoga, Tai chi, meditation, Reiki, Aromatherapy, dance and medicine, and Qigong. All these are home remedies that work well as they have been in practice for hundreds of years.
Patients from different cultures have different ways of describing their mental illness signs and symptoms to their clinicians. Asian patients, for example, do not report their emotional symptoms. They only say somatic symptoms such as dizziness. They will only acknowledge their psychological symptoms when questioned further. Coping style is another factor whereby some Asian groups tend to think that avoidance is the best way to deal with mental illness rather than outward expression (Yang & Wonpat-Borja, 2012). They tend to cope with distress by relying on themselves.
Strong fanatism in traditional beliefs is one of the barriers that hinder Chinese Americans from accessing appropriate mental treatment. The Chinese believe that mental illness is caused by evil spirits and inherited curses from t...