Deck 8: Striving for Health and Coping with Illness

Question 1

All of the following are premises associated with medical anthropology except:

A) healing systems must be culturally appropriate
B) illness is best understood as a function of biology and culture
C) diseases occur regardless of socio-political circumstances
D) the human body and symptoms should be interpreted through culture

Answer 1

C

Question 2

The culturally-specific medical systems of non-Western societies are also called:

A) ethnomedicine
B) medical anthropology
C) traditional medicine
D) biomedicine

Answer 2

A

Question 3

Ethnomedical systems often approach healing as a:

A) mental psychosis
B) biological imbalance
C) need to seek physiological remedy
D) social imbalance

Answer 3

D

Question 4

The Latin American countries with the lowest rates of male mortality in the perio2001-2002 are:

A) Cuba, Costa Rica, Brazil
B) Haiti, Guatemala, Bolivia
C) Chile, Cuba, Costa Rica
D) Argentina, Chile, Venezuela

Question 5

In the period 1999-2002, approximately what percentage of Latin Americans waclassified as "indigent," or desperately poor?

A) 90%
B) 75%
C) 60%
D) 50%

Question 6

The greatest causes of illness and disease in Latin America are:

A) poverty and socio-economic inequality
B) poverty and ethnomedical practices
C) poverty and lack of socio-political incentives
D) unsanitary cultural and social practices

Question 7

What is meant by the term "culturalist approach" to illness?

A) an approach that ascribes disease and illness to beliefs, values, and attitudes.
B) an approach that is sensitive to the cultural needs of the people concerned
C) an approach in which healers and practitioners are all community members
D) an approach that takes into account the cultural and social illnesses only

Question 8

In Haiti, the high rates of HIV virus/AIDS cases is attributable to:

A) high rates of male prostitution
B) male-to-male homosexual transmission
C) heterosexual transmission
D) female-to-female homosexual transmission

Question 9

What is meant by "life's lesions"?

A) a series of illnesses suffered by women in Latin America
B) a series of folk illnesses caused by culture
C) adversity and unresolved contradictions that lead to psychosomatic illness
D) differential allocation of food and nutrition within the family

Question 10

When there is loss of appetite, listlessness, lack of interest, apathy, nauseairritability, weakness and withdrawal, accompanied by high fever, severe diarrhea, and constant crying in children, it is diagnosed usually as:

A) susto
B) mal de ojo
C) nervios
D) life's lesions

Question 11

What is a "topographical-hydraulic model" of health?

A) a model that relates the anatomy and physiology of the body to a socio geographical space
B) a model that relates sickness to development and culture change
C) a model that relates emotions and physical state with environmental policies
D) a model found among indigenous peoples that relates the body to the social order along lines of class

Question 12

The belief that specific persons have the ability to directly communicate with thsupernatural through a trance or possession experience is called:

A) witchcraft
B) sorcery
C) susto
D) shamanism

Question 13

Who are ayahuasqueros?

A) individuals who cause harm through witchcraft
B) shamans who work with a hallucinogenic plant
C) local healers who use marijuana for treatment
D) persons who cut away fat from others causing tuberculosis

Question 14

In the mid-1970s Rubin and Comitas found what percentage of the rural Jamaicapopulation using some form of marijuana (ganja)?

A) 30%-40%
B) 70%-80%
C) 60%-70%
D) 20%-30%

Question 15

In the study by Baer and Bustillo among Florida's farmworkers, they concludethat:

A) folk illnesses were triggered by the migrant experience and require psychological services
B) folk illnesses were not real medical concerns, although they do causes social problems
C) folk illnesses exist and should always be treated by biomedical professionals
D) folk illnesses exhibit symptoms that require services of sensitive biomedical practitioners and also folk healers

Question 16

All human societies have a medical system.

Question 17

Cuba's health status is not only far superior to most Latin America countries, but ialso compares favorably with the United States.

Question 18

The incidence of tuberculosis has spread dramatically in recent decades.

Question 19

If practitioners approach the study of disease as one of biology, most diseases cabe healed.

Question 20

Migration in Brazil has had much to do with the increasing rates of HIV.

Question 21

Nervios is a folk illness in Latin America.

Question 22

Children are far more susceptible to susto than adults.

Question 23

Shamans are healers.

Question 24

Ayahuasca ceremonies usually take place at first light in the morning.

Question 25

Coca consumption is a key element of Andean health.

Question 26

What is critical medical anthropology?

Question 27

What are the distinctions between ethnomedicine and biomedicine?

Question 28

Why are female infants and children more likely to die of illness than males?

Question 29

What is "anthropology of the emotions"?

Question 30

Give at least four uses of coca in the Andes.

Question 31

Using the example of liquichado from the Andes, discuss the challenges thapatients face when choosing whether to seek biomedical or ethnomedical treatments.

Question 32

Discuss why immigrants, such as Haitians in the early 1980s and Puerto Ricans athe beginning of the 20^th century, became stigmatized with labels such as "diseased" and "debilitated" when they reached the United States.

Question 33

Describe how a system of religious pluralism, biomedicine, and ethnomedicinworks to promote better health.