There are many main ideas and themes in the book “The Spirit Catches You When You Fall” by Anne Fadiman. I and my group discussed three themes and specific main points that we all thought was important to take from the book. Some of the main points that we discuss is Hmong culture/family, language barriers, and epilepsy. I will talk about the main points, a brief reflection on the doctor’s take on this situation and the theme sometimes you can’t control the outcome of situations.
The first thing we discussed in our presentation was Hmong culture and family. This particular main point was the longest covered because it was so much information on Hmong culture. We covered how Hmong culture is a clan based and very family oriented. The Hmong
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always lived very close to their families, extended families and relatives. They have a total of 18 clan names. Their last name is their clan name. The clan name is very important to the Hmong family because it gives them a sense of identity and it tells which family they belong to. We also talked about marriage. There are three ways a couple can initiate a wedding. The first one is formal. This is when the man and his family do a house call. They bring gifts and money and ask the girl parents for her hand in marriage. The second one is the most common way couples get married. When a man is interested in marrying someone, he brings her gifts. If she accepts it, she agrees to marry him. The last one is bride-napping. This is the abusive way of marrying someone. When a man has no respect for the girl feelings and decided that even if she doesn’t want to marry him, he will force her to. Hmong men marry women at younger ages between 13 or 14. And they also, can have more than one wife. We didn’t mention that if a man can’t find a bride in the United States, he will travel overseas to marry one. We mention superstitions that the Hmong people believe in. Some ones that we didn’t mention in our presentation is don’t point at the moon or it will cut your ear, poke a hole in a leaf and look through it and you’ll see a ghost, or if you hear someone call out your name, don’t answer unless you see someone near. Superstitions are born because of their beliefs. Shamanism and animism plays a big role in Hmong lives. They rely on them to mediate and travel between the spirit and human worlds. They believe every little thing have a spirit. They believe people who are epileptic have a soul that needs to be reunited and the cure is to perform a ritual who attempts to reunite the body and soul. Epilepsy is a disorder in which a nerve cell activity in the brain is disturbed, causing seizures.
Seizures occur because of sudden surge of electrical activity in the brain. This cause is a temporary and disturbed in the messaging system between brain cells. Epilepsy may occur as a result of a genetic disorder or n acquired brain injury, such as trauma or stroke. There are four different kinds of seizures that can occur. Simple partial seizure, which is when the patient is conscious during the seizure in most cases, and the patient, is aware of his/her surrounding even when the seizure is in progress. Complex partial seizure is when the patient is conscious is impaired. The patient will generally not remember the seizure and if he/she does the recollection of it will be vague. Generalized seizure is when both halves of the brain have epileptic activity and the patient conscious is loss. Secondary generalized seizure is when epileptic activity starts as a partial seizure but then spread to both halves of the brain. The main symptom of epilepsy is repeated seizures. But, there are other symptoms such as short spells or black out or confused memory, panic or become fearful, repetitive movement that seem inappropriate, short period the person is unresponsive to instructions or questions etc.… There is no cure for epilepsy but overtime you can help it get better or find ways to adjust to it. You can also take medication, gob through surgery etc.… Epilepsy was a main point in the book because the main character Lia Lee was diagnosed with it. Her culture believed that it was a blessing rather than a disorder. Because of her culture it was impossible for Lia to be treated the way she supposed to be treated. Her parents did take her to get treatment and medication but they also utilized traditional healing methods. The family believed that little medicine and treatment was okay but not too much or that would stop the spiritual healing. In our presentation we talked
about the roles of the doctors. Lia doctors Neil and Peggy treated her disorder as a disorder and not something such as a blessing. They attempted to provide her with the best and highest medication as possible. But, due to lack of interpretation between the doctor and Lia’s family she was unable to follow the doctor instructions. Language barrier is a phrase used to indicate the difficult faced when communication with others speaking multiple languages. Language barriers were another topic that we discuss in our presentation. Lia’s and her family speaks Hmong language and the doctor that was caring for her spoke English. This made it extremely hard for them to communicate and understand each other. Because of that, Lia’s parents did not follow the doctor’s instruction which made Lia sicker. Because of Lia’s safety her doctors placed her in foster care without any discussion with her parents. Instead of medication, Lia still followed her families’ tradition and continued to love and care for her. Did the doctor do everything that they could to help save Lia? Well, the doctors gave Lia excellent care, they explain Lia regimen to the lees as well as they could, they also consulted with other specialist and doctors about Lia’s medical issues. But, did the doctors do the best that they could? The doctors failed to figure out how to communicate to the family in a way they could understand. Which lead to the family not giving medications her medications that she needed. Isn’t that the important part that should be accomplished? The doctor failed to help save a kid; they failed at accomplishing their goal because of language barriers. I believed that the doctors could have did more such as looking into Lia’s culture more and find out a way to help save her life. They should have looked deeper into the situation and found out ways to avoid language barriers. This could have benefit both the patient and the doctor because Lia could have lived more than twenty six years and the doctors could have been prepared for future reference just in case they come across another Hmong family. Have you ever heard a doctor or nurse say “we did everything that we could”? As doctors it is their job to do the best that they could to get a better outcome. We expect doctors to be as perfect as possible because we are giving them something that is valuable to us; life. But, as a doctor and a patient you have to realize that sometimes you can’t control the outcome of situations. That was one of our themes because the doctors may have felt they’ve done everything that they could to help Lia’s disorder and even though they wanted to take different routes and couldn’t they did everything that they could. They couldn’t control Lia’s family decision because of their culture. So, sometimes it’s best to do everything that you could and whatever the outcome is then so be it. Language barriers make it hard for two or more people to communicate. You can try and find ways to communicate to each other but if you’re unable to do so, you can’t control the outcome. In conclusion the point is to try and do everything that you could when dealing with language barriers, patients, a disorder or different culture. But what happens at the end is something you can’t control. We just hope for the best.
She heard about the Hmong through a friend, and so she spent 4 years living in Merced, California and another 5 writing this book. She attempts to stay fairly neutral in her writing, though through her time with the Lees, she confesses that her writing may appear biased toward the Hmong culture rather than toward the Americans. However, in the end she could not blame one side or the other for the unfortunate tragedy of Lia, who got hit in the cross-fire between these two cultures. Her theoretical view is a type of cultural relativism. Neither the Hmong nor the Americans could emerge as the better culture. She does not address any questions about direct unethical practices. The Hmong did not practice human sacrifices, and the animals they did sacrifice were theirs. She does seem to believe that every culture has its weak and strong
What are the most important aspects of Hmong culture? What do the Hmong consider their most important duties and obligations? How did they affect the Hmong’s transition to the United States?
Within this critical analysis, I hope to show that the lack of communication and compromise between the Hmong family and the American doctors, was the defining blow to Lia’s ill health. I hope to do this by addressing the following three main points of interest in relation to this miscommunication; the views held by the American healthcare professions on the causes of Lia’s illness, contrasted with the opinions of Lia’s parents. I will then discuss the health-seeking strategies of Lia’s parents and how they were influenced by different resou...
This book addresses one of the common characteristics, and challenges, of health care today: the need to achieve a working knowledge of as many cultures as possible in health care. The Hmong population of Merced, California addresses the collision between Western medicine and holistic healing traditions of the Hmong immigrants, which plays out a common dilemma in western medical centers: the need to integrate modern western medicinal remedies with aspects of cultural that are good for the well-being of the patient, and the belief of the patient’s ability to recuperate. What we see is a clash, or lack of integration in the example of the story thereof. Lia, a Hmong child with a rare form of epilepsy, must enter the western hospital instead of the Laotian forest. In the forest she would seek out herbs to remedy the problems that beset her, but in the west she is forced to enter the western medical hospital without access to those remedies, which provided not only physical but spiritual comfort to those members of the Hmong culture. The herbs that are supposed to fix her spirit in the forest are not available in the western hospital. The Merced County hospital system clashes with Hmong animist traditions.
...nding my awareness to the cultures around me. Throughout this course I have learned many things about cultures that are recognizable to me, but I can defiantly say I have a different perspective on many cultures now. this book in particular, has opened my eyes to a culture I had no idea existed. The ways and traditions of the Hmong people, to me, is something I would expect to read about in a book about people from hundreds of years ago. Nevertheless, Fadiman had granted me the knowledge I need to know if I am ever faced with a Hmong patient, and for that I am grateful.
Since the Hmong have endured and survived as a culture, they believe in preservation of the entire traditions. Embroideries and methods have not changed much but the use of fabric has updated. Flower cloth has evolved to story cloths relating to all their past historic events. Although the Hmong have adjusted with certain changes, their preservation of their skillful handcraft has not. It is an important value, tradition, and ritual to their culture that has continued to exist even through American society.
How would it feel to flee from post-war Communist forces, only to face an ethnocentric population of people in a new country? In Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, a portrait of a disquieting, often times touching, ethnography (i.e. a book that details particular data of an extended period of time an anthropologist spent living closely with a community of individuals during his or her field work) of Fadiman's experience living in Merced, California, which was home to the largest population of Hmong refugees, such as the Lee family, from Laos who suffered mass confusion when trying to navigate the American health care system. Because the Hmong could not speak sufficient English until the children gained language skills native to the United States, residents of California were not accepting of the Hmong community. Fadiman aims to better understand how knowledge of illness among Hmong and Western medical practitioners differ, which pushes the reader to understand how the complicate medical treatment in the past as well as the present from a perspective of an American observing a Hmong family's struggle with the system. In America, it isn’t uncommon to be judged for your clothing, your house, or the amount of money your family makes, so it is easy to believe that the Hmong people were not easily accepted into American society. As a whole, ethnocentrism, or the tendency to believe that one's culture is superior to another, is one of America's weaknesses and this account proves ethnocentric behavior was prominent even in the 1970-80's when Fadiman was in the process of doing her fieldwork in post-Vietnam War Era California.
Furthermore, these cultural competences defined their lives, how they lived in the community and how they organized their roles and their functions towards the society. These were various cultural domains that overall defined their personality and how they should live their lives and be unique individuals. However, it was these same cultural and religious considerations that separated them from the "normal sense" of development, function and expression of existence (American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2009, p. 1). These are the cultural and religious influences that disabled them to understand the narrative display and critical applications of modern knowledge and science. Because of their own set of cultural displays and traditions, the Hmong people could not care less of the applications and understanding of modern practices and expressions.
In “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” by Anne Fadiman, the whole story revolves around Lia, the thirteenth child of Lee family. Lee family was a refugee family in USA and Lia was their first child to be born in US. At the time of time of birth, she was declared as a healthy child but at the age of three it was founded that she is suffering from epilepsy. In the words of western or scientific world the term epilepsy mean mental disorder of a person and in Hmong culture, epilepsy is referred to as qaug dab peg (translated in English, "the spirit catches you and you fall down"), in which epileptic attacks are perceived as evidence of the epileptic's ability to enter and journey momentarily into the spirit realm (Wikipedia, 2014)
The Hmong people, an Asian ethnic group from the mountainous regions of China, Vietnam and Laos, greatly value their culture and traditions. The film “The Split Horn: Life of a Hmong Shaman in America” documents the seventeen year journey of the Hmong Shaman, Paja Thao and his family from the mountains of Laos to the heartland of America. This film shows the struggle of Paja Thao to maintain their 5000 year-old shamanic traditions as his children embrace the American culture. Moreover, the film shows that one of the major problems refugees like Paja Thao and his family face upon their arrival to the United States is conflict with the American medical system. Despite the dominant biomedical model of health, the film “The Split Horn” shows that
The Hmong culture is firmly rooted in their spiritual belief in animism, ancestral worship and reincarnation. These beliefs connect them to their sense of health and well-being. They view illness as having either a natural or spiritual cause. A spiritual cause results in a “loss of souls” or is an action or misdeed that may have offended an ancestor’s spirit (California Department of Health Services, 2004, Purnell, 2013, p. 317). The soul escapes the body and may not be able to find its way back home.
Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that affects the brain causing people to have seizures. A seizure is a big disruption of electrical communication between neurons, leading to the temporary release of excessive energy in a synchronized form Epilepsy is very unpredictable. Having a seizure disorder doesn't mean that you can only have one type of seizure. People can have many different types of seizures; it can vary on the person. In some cases depending on the type of seizures someone may have they can grow out of them. (“Epilepsy Foundation." What Is Epilepsy? N.p., n.d. Web. 09 May 2014.)
Share the story of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures.
The Hmong Culture of South Asia is a very interesting ethnic group. Between 300,000 to 600,000 Hmong live in Southeast Asian countries, such as Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. About 8 million more live in the southern provinces of China. Since the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Hmong refugees from Southeast Asia have settled in Australia, France, Canada, and the United States. The largest Hmong refugee community lives in the United States with a population of about 110,000. The U.S. Department of state has tried to spread Hmong refugees out across the country to reduce the impact on any one region. Because Hmong families tend to be large in numbers, the community grows rapidly.
Epilepsy, also known as “seizure disorder,” or “seizure attack,” is the fourth most common neurological disorder known to mankind, affecting an estimated 2.3 million adults and 467,711 children in the United States. Unfortunately this disorder is becoming far more common and widespread worldwide. This staggering number of cases of people suffering from Epilepsy also involves an average growth rate of 150,000 new cases each year in the United States alone. Generally, many of the people who develop who are a part of the new are mainly either young children or older adults. Your brain communicates through chemical and electrical signals that are all specialized for specific tasks. However, through the process of communication, chemical messengers, also known as neurotransmitters can suddenly fail, resulting in what is known as a seizure attack. Epilepsy occurs when a few too many brain cells become excited, or activated simultaneously, so that the brain cannot function properly and to it’s highest potential. Epilepsy is characterized when there is an abnormal imbalance in the chemical activity of the brain, leading to a disruption in the electrical activity of the brain. This disruption specifically occurs in the central nervous system (CNS), which is the part of the nervous system that contains the brain and spinal cord. This causes an interruption in communication between presynaptic neurons and postsynaptic neurons; between the axon of one neuron, the message sender and the dendrite of another neuron, the message recipient. Consequently, the effects that epileptic seizures may induce may range anywhere from mild to severe, life-threatening ramifications and complications. There are many different types of seizures associa...