An Overview of Indigenous Descriptions of Mental Phenomena and the Range of Traditional Healing Practices Amongst the Vietnamese

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2397515
AutoresTuong Phan (0000-0002-2013-3359, Flinders University of South Australia, NSW, Australia), Derrick Silove (0000-0002-5609-9375, UNSW Sydney)
Ano1999
Volume36
Fascículo1
Páginas79-94
Data de publicação1999-03-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoTranscultural Psychiatry (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1363-4615 • E-ISSN: 1461-7471
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/136346159903600105
OpenAlexW2140078405
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas17
Referências citadas12

A wide range of expressions describing feelings and emotions is identifiable in the indigenous Vietnamese literature. The majority of Vietnamese expressions for common emotional states appear to have semantic equivalents in western psychology. The present overview draws on the lay and medical literature to provide examples of such expressions and descriptions. There does not appear to be evidence of a comprehensive psychiatric typology in the Vietnamese medical literature, although it is unclear to what extent the framework of Chinese medicine has influenced Vietnamese practitioners. Traditional Vietnamese health-care services, including those for mental-health problems, are eclectic, deriving their principles from cosmology, metaphysics and supernatural belief systems inter alia. The holistic notion of physical and mental health based on the state of harmony of the individual within the cosmos may be incompatible with the reductionistic principles underlying western taxonomies. Thus, the extent to which indigenous concepts of mental-ill-health influence Vietnamese immigrants' choices about the utilization of either traditional or mainstream mental-health services in western countries needs further investigation

Epistemology · Indigenous · Linguistics · Mainstream · Mental health · Political science · Psychotherapist · Reductionism · Sociology · Typology · Vietnamese · Anthropology · Cultural, Psychoanalytic, and Sociopolitical Reflections · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Psychology · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies