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Faith healers are taking over the role of psychiatrists in Iraq

Background: Due to lack of education and awareness, faith healing has become a popular way of treating psychiatric patients. Objective: To ascertain the role of faith healers in the treatment of psychiatric illnesses by exploring the percentage of patients attending those healers. Methods: A semi-st...

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Autores principales: Younis, Maha S., Lafta, Riyadh K., Dhiaa, Saba
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: HBKU Press 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6883745/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31819859
http://dx.doi.org/10.5339/qmj.2019.13
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author Younis, Maha S.
Lafta, Riyadh K.
Dhiaa, Saba
author_facet Younis, Maha S.
Lafta, Riyadh K.
Dhiaa, Saba
author_sort Younis, Maha S.
collection PubMed
description Background: Due to lack of education and awareness, faith healing has become a popular way of treating psychiatric patients. Objective: To ascertain the role of faith healers in the treatment of psychiatric illnesses by exploring the percentage of patients attending those healers. Methods: A semi-structured questionnaire was applied through a direct face-to-face interview with the patients and their companions; it inquired whether the patient has ever visited faith healers, the method of treatment the patients were subjected to, and their opinion about the benefit they got regarding improvement in their condition. Results: Among the total 482 cases; 279 (57%) reported going to faith healers (FHs) at any time before, during, or after a psychiatric consultation. Of those, 84.6% reported visiting FHs less than 10 times, while 15.4% went 10 times or more; 36.9% still believe that the treatment of FHs is accepted or even good (21.5%), while 30.9% realized that it is useless, and 10.7% think it is bad. No association was found between going to FHs and patient age or gender, while there was a significant association with marital status (p < 0.02) and with education (p < 0.001). Patients with schizophrenia/psychosis or bipolar disorders visited FHs significantly more often than those with other diagnoses. Conclusion: Faith healing is prevalent in Iraq and FHs may overwhelm the role of psychiatrists in treating mental illnesses. Sincere efforts are needed to help build public awareness and to improve accessibility and utilization of mental health services for this vulnerable group.
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spelling pubmed-68837452019-12-09 Faith healers are taking over the role of psychiatrists in Iraq Younis, Maha S. Lafta, Riyadh K. Dhiaa, Saba Qatar Med J Research Article Background: Due to lack of education and awareness, faith healing has become a popular way of treating psychiatric patients. Objective: To ascertain the role of faith healers in the treatment of psychiatric illnesses by exploring the percentage of patients attending those healers. Methods: A semi-structured questionnaire was applied through a direct face-to-face interview with the patients and their companions; it inquired whether the patient has ever visited faith healers, the method of treatment the patients were subjected to, and their opinion about the benefit they got regarding improvement in their condition. Results: Among the total 482 cases; 279 (57%) reported going to faith healers (FHs) at any time before, during, or after a psychiatric consultation. Of those, 84.6% reported visiting FHs less than 10 times, while 15.4% went 10 times or more; 36.9% still believe that the treatment of FHs is accepted or even good (21.5%), while 30.9% realized that it is useless, and 10.7% think it is bad. No association was found between going to FHs and patient age or gender, while there was a significant association with marital status (p < 0.02) and with education (p < 0.001). Patients with schizophrenia/psychosis or bipolar disorders visited FHs significantly more often than those with other diagnoses. Conclusion: Faith healing is prevalent in Iraq and FHs may overwhelm the role of psychiatrists in treating mental illnesses. Sincere efforts are needed to help build public awareness and to improve accessibility and utilization of mental health services for this vulnerable group. HBKU Press 2019-11-29 /pmc/articles/PMC6883745/ /pubmed/31819859 http://dx.doi.org/10.5339/qmj.2019.13 Text en © 2019 Younis, Lafta, Dhiaa, licensee HBKU Press. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Younis, Maha S.
Lafta, Riyadh K.
Dhiaa, Saba
Faith healers are taking over the role of psychiatrists in Iraq
title Faith healers are taking over the role of psychiatrists in Iraq
title_full Faith healers are taking over the role of psychiatrists in Iraq
title_fullStr Faith healers are taking over the role of psychiatrists in Iraq
title_full_unstemmed Faith healers are taking over the role of psychiatrists in Iraq
title_short Faith healers are taking over the role of psychiatrists in Iraq
title_sort faith healers are taking over the role of psychiatrists in iraq
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6883745/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31819859
http://dx.doi.org/10.5339/qmj.2019.13
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