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Religion and Health: exploration of attitudes and health perceptions of faith healing users in urban Ghana

BACKGROUND: The main aim of the study was to explore the attitudes and health perceptions of faith healing users in Kumasi Metropolis, Ghana. This has become necessary because faith healing practice is an important area but remains neglected in the health care literature. In an age when biowestern m...

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Autores principales: Peprah, Prince, Mohammed, Razak M. Gyasi, Adjei, Prince Osei-Wusu, Agyemang-Duah, Williams, Abalo, Emmanuel Mawuli, Kotei, Josephine Nii Amon
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6288884/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30526561
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-018-6277-9
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author Peprah, Prince
Mohammed, Razak M. Gyasi
Adjei, Prince Osei-Wusu
Agyemang-Duah, Williams
Abalo, Emmanuel Mawuli
Kotei, Josephine Nii Amon
author_facet Peprah, Prince
Mohammed, Razak M. Gyasi
Adjei, Prince Osei-Wusu
Agyemang-Duah, Williams
Abalo, Emmanuel Mawuli
Kotei, Josephine Nii Amon
author_sort Peprah, Prince
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The main aim of the study was to explore the attitudes and health perceptions of faith healing users in Kumasi Metropolis, Ghana. This has become necessary because faith healing practice is an important area but remains neglected in the health care literature. In an age when biowestern medicine is touted as the cure for most diseases, understanding how and why individuals seek alternative treatment, specifically faith healing modalities may help to develop more effective health care interventions. METHODS: We employed exploratory study design of purely qualitative research approach involving 40 conveniently selected participants from four different purposively selected faith healing centres to get a maximum variation of experiences and opinions on the time of consultation, perceived effectiveness and challenges of faith healing practices in Ghana. In-depth interviews were conducted from 10th June to 30th July, 2017. Data were thematically analysed and presented based on the a posteriori inductive reduction approach. RESULTS: The main findings were that faith healers served as the first port of call for disease curing and prevention for most users. Consumers of faith healing perceived their health status to be good due to the perceived effectiveness of faith healing for curing of health problems. However, users faced challenges such as stigmatisation and victimisation in seeking health care. CONCLUSION: This study has provided the first baseline evidence in this important area of inquiry that has been neglected in the scholarly discourse in Ghana. By implication, users’ positive attitudes and perceptions toward faith healing call for integration policies that allow formal medical services to have open idea to faith healing practices in Ghana.
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spelling pubmed-62888842018-12-14 Religion and Health: exploration of attitudes and health perceptions of faith healing users in urban Ghana Peprah, Prince Mohammed, Razak M. Gyasi Adjei, Prince Osei-Wusu Agyemang-Duah, Williams Abalo, Emmanuel Mawuli Kotei, Josephine Nii Amon BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: The main aim of the study was to explore the attitudes and health perceptions of faith healing users in Kumasi Metropolis, Ghana. This has become necessary because faith healing practice is an important area but remains neglected in the health care literature. In an age when biowestern medicine is touted as the cure for most diseases, understanding how and why individuals seek alternative treatment, specifically faith healing modalities may help to develop more effective health care interventions. METHODS: We employed exploratory study design of purely qualitative research approach involving 40 conveniently selected participants from four different purposively selected faith healing centres to get a maximum variation of experiences and opinions on the time of consultation, perceived effectiveness and challenges of faith healing practices in Ghana. In-depth interviews were conducted from 10th June to 30th July, 2017. Data were thematically analysed and presented based on the a posteriori inductive reduction approach. RESULTS: The main findings were that faith healers served as the first port of call for disease curing and prevention for most users. Consumers of faith healing perceived their health status to be good due to the perceived effectiveness of faith healing for curing of health problems. However, users faced challenges such as stigmatisation and victimisation in seeking health care. CONCLUSION: This study has provided the first baseline evidence in this important area of inquiry that has been neglected in the scholarly discourse in Ghana. By implication, users’ positive attitudes and perceptions toward faith healing call for integration policies that allow formal medical services to have open idea to faith healing practices in Ghana. BioMed Central 2018-12-10 /pmc/articles/PMC6288884/ /pubmed/30526561 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-018-6277-9 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Peprah, Prince
Mohammed, Razak M. Gyasi
Adjei, Prince Osei-Wusu
Agyemang-Duah, Williams
Abalo, Emmanuel Mawuli
Kotei, Josephine Nii Amon
Religion and Health: exploration of attitudes and health perceptions of faith healing users in urban Ghana
title Religion and Health: exploration of attitudes and health perceptions of faith healing users in urban Ghana
title_full Religion and Health: exploration of attitudes and health perceptions of faith healing users in urban Ghana
title_fullStr Religion and Health: exploration of attitudes and health perceptions of faith healing users in urban Ghana
title_full_unstemmed Religion and Health: exploration of attitudes and health perceptions of faith healing users in urban Ghana
title_short Religion and Health: exploration of attitudes and health perceptions of faith healing users in urban Ghana
title_sort religion and health: exploration of attitudes and health perceptions of faith healing users in urban ghana
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6288884/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30526561
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-018-6277-9
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