This is the final section to this online Weebly experience and is the course reflection. I can say that some of my viewpoints about illnesses have changed since the beginning of the class. Before I was exposed to the learning materials presented throughout the semester I had only limited knowledge of medical anthropology from what was told in anthropology club and in the human adaptability class I took last spring semester.
I have learned a tremendous amount because essentially the whole course was new information. More specifically, however, I learned a few important concepts. First of all, I had no idea that there were illnesses that could be classified as culture bound and the significant role that culture plays in having disease or even if it is considered a disease to begin with! I guess the old saying applies here, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, in a manner of speaking. It is for these reasons why I felt that the most beneficial approach I learned about this semester was the ethnomedical.
One week I wrote about running amok and how in the culture it originated in it was viewed as a normal spiritual occurrence and suffered no punishment from the rest of the community. The way culture views a condition can be extremely different and it is important not to fall into ethnocentrism or strictly Western ways of thinking about the world. Before entering the class I was skeptical about the usefulness of medical professionals and after being educated in this class, I still am. It just despises me how so many doctors are pill pushers and have no remorse for the way they are driving Western society’s idea of healthcare.
This class opened up my eyes to alternative forms of medicine and the power of the placebo effect. As reference to material from class, specifically the video posted on YouTube called “Placebo: Cracking the Code,” I found it astonishing that you could have the placebo effect happen from a mock surgery!! Absolutely fascinating! This goes to show the power of the human mind and how perception really is everything. Also I found the lecture by Taz from the same week to be informative as well. Within the lecture the embedded video spoke of the effectiveness of the larger size pill compared to a smaller one and how a capsule has a greater effect than a tablet does. Red is better for stimulant and blue is better for depression, this just blows my mind away.
I think that if any other material was to be added to the coursework, the best input I would have would to incorporate more information about the choices doctors make when treating their patients. In a way, try to find some material/interviews asking doctors what is going through their minds when they are working with a patient. What are the pressures on doctors from the medical establishment and healthcare system? Are they making the best decisions for their patients or are they working within their limits set forth by the institutions in place? Just take a min and watch the video posted on the top left column about deaths from prescription drugs. Does it seem right that doctors prescribe so many drugs when their effects are not fully understood and the biomedical pathways that they work on are unknown? In the video, Jonathan, tells of a type II diabetes drug that is actually prescribed even though it is toxic for the heart. The video posted on the right is one that was presented to us in one of the week's lecture, but I found it to be so eye opening I just had to include it in this final reflection. The nature in which drugs are discovered and distributed is very disturbing to me and I think that the drug companies need to work on different methods, but then why would they when people are so willing to solve all their problems by just taking a little pill?
If I were to explain to someone who was not familiar with medical anthropology what exactly it is all about, I think I would say something along the line of – Medical anthropology is a subfield of anthropology which deals with the medical aspects of people. These aspects include the healthcare systems and politics, medicine, professions, doctors, culture and how it effects the individual. There are different ways medical anthropologists can answer questions depending on the view they are working with, for example, there is more than just the biological field of healthcare, but more-so there is the ethnomedical, experiential, critical, and applied categories medical anthropologists work in.
I feel that anthropology has much to offer the medical world and that it would be most beneficial if all our doctors were trained in anthropology to some extend in order to deliver better healthcare to their patients regardless of their cultural heritage.