Hmong Culture Health
Hmong Health Culture

The Hmong people are a group of Asian-Americans who have been living in the United States since an immigration program was started in 1975. Because of their strong animistic faith and beliefs in the supernatural, they have been slow to adapt to the healthcare practices of the United States. The Hmong continue to rely on alternative medicine and faith healers to cure illnesses.

Health Beliefs and Practices among the Hmong

The health practices and beliefs of the Hmong people are traditional for the most part. The Hmong are a spiritual people and this philosophy permeates their concepts of health and illness (Cha, 2010). Like all other matters of an individual's existence, the health of a person is also linked to the community. The clan elder is consulted in the case of a serious illness. The help of an herbal therapist massage therapist or acupuncture therapist may be sought.…...

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References

Cha, D. (2003). Hmong American Concepts of Health, Healing and Conventional Medicine. Routledge.

Cha, Y.P. (2010). An Introduction to Hmong Culture. McFarland.

Hamilton-Merritt, J. (1993). Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992. Indiana University Press.

Her, V.K. (2012). Hmong and American: From Refugees to Citizens. Minnesota Historical Society Press.

Lia Lee could not be seen alone, as the doctors saw her. Their obligation was not only to her, but to her whole family.
Lia Lee's brother aptly writes: I do recall everything from the door slamming incident to the day the doctors told my family that it was okay for her to come but she will not live pass 7 days. I will never forget that week or those many years of pain my family or the doctors had to go through….We must understand that different cultures have different ways of curing a person and doctors have their policy they must follow. To avoid another incident like this, we must work together as a whole and not blame each other for not cooperating with one another

5. In many cases, patients cannot speak for themselves: It is not only Lia Lee. Patients can be old and frail, have dementia, be…...

hen the Hmong refugees encounter the peculiarities of the estern medical system, their entire worldview is called into question. Yet it is mainly the Americans who struggle. The Hmong view of health, healing, and wellness differ so sharply from that of the Americans that it is we who must examine our beliefs, not the Hmong.
History has not been kind to the Hmong. Yet in some ways, this cruelty has helped strengthen the culture. After all, the Hmong are known well among the tribes of Southeastern Asia. Part of this knowledge is due to the American use of Hmong during the Vietnam ar. As Hamilton-Merritt points out, though, the Americans used the Hmong as pawns and the Hmong paid dearly. hen the war ended for the Americans, it did not for the Hmong. Many were killed, and the society lost a significant portion of its elderly and female population. The…...

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Works Cited

Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.

Hamilton-Merritt, Jane. Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992. Bloomington, in: Indiana University Press, 1999.

arrival of Hmong to the United States and delves briefly on the earlier conditions of the Hmong in Laos and Southeast Asia, their region of origin.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures, by Anne Friedan is a book about the encounter between a Hmong family and the American medical community. It also goes into great detail about how the Hmong became allies to the Americans in the war in Vietnam. Hmong is a race of people that originates in China. The Hmong are agrarian, with animism (belief in individual spirits inhabiting natural objects) being their source of religious influence. In the early 1960's, the Hmong people were recruited by the CIA, to help the American Air Force in protecting their radar sites during the Vietnam War and were also entrusted with duties to fight off the…...

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Reference

Fadiman, A. (1997). The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

e know that we do not know everything in the est. However, many aspects of the Hmong are also just coming out of the Middle Ages and there is only so much that can be tolerated and there must be a demand for a middle ground in the way that western medicine and culture deals with medical issues when the science and the treatment regimen is clear. For instance, Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome needs to be studied (ibid 188n).
As stated in the book, "Although the Hmong believe that illness can be caused by a variety of sources - [...] by far the most common cause of illness is soul loss" (ibid 10). To bring these souls back into the body and to bring bodily health, soul calling ceremonies are seen to be important to the Hmong. There is no reason that such cultural flourishes can be tolerated and incorporated…...

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Works Cited

Fadiman, . The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. New York: Ferrar, Straus Giroux,

Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman is a groundbreaking book about cross-cultural communication in health care. The book is about Lia Lee, who was the first in her Hmong family to be born in the United States. Her parents spoke no English. When Lia Lee was three months old, she had her first seizure. Due to misdiagnosis, a string of unfortunate events prevented Lia Lee from receiving the best possible care. Moreover, she was wrested from her family of origin and placed in foster care. The disruption to her life, the misdiagnosis, and the lack of communication between the health care team and her family led to her eventual death after decades in a persistent vegetative state. The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down has become critical reading material for all health care workers seeking to provide the best quality of care in a multicultural…...

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Reference

Fadiman, A. (2012). The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Both healers could learn how to incorporate techniques that may be different from their respective cultures into how they treat medical conditions.
Ultimately Lia was put into foster care because the doctor believed that the parents were not caring for her properly. Lia's foster parents were Dee and to Korda. They had children of their own and wanted to care for Lia. Lia needed a great deal of care and affection and her foster mother gave her this affection even to the point of breast feeding Lia. I was not surprised at the level of affection; I was somewhat surprised that the foster mother breast fed Lia right along with her biological child. The foster parents did not belittle the Lees. Te foster parents tried to understand the Lee's perspective on medical care but they also understood the perspective of the American doctors and the fact that Lia needed to…...

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References

Fadiman a. (1998) the spirit catches you and you fall down: a Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures. Macmillan

The family would certainly have been more comfortable if the hospital made more of an effort to understand their culture and beliefs. The Lees were treated as if they were indignant and unresponsive to the needs of their child which was not the case at all. The hospital could have enlisted the help of affluent Hmong natives who have become more accustomed to American traditions. This person could have helped both parties, the Lees to understand medical necessities and the hospital staff to understand the importance of cultural traditions. Both parties could have used a trusted intermediary, Fadiman (1997) refers to this as a "cultural broker" (p. 265).

Another factor that would have made this experience easier for the Lees would have been if the medical professionals had an understanding of some of the important religious rituals and beliefs of their culture. Of particular importance to the Hmong is the concept…...

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References

Fadiman, a. (1997). The spirit catches you and you fall down. New York: Farrar,

Straus, and Giroux.

Medical training is all about treating patients who understand, there is little training for the patients who are not "normal," and so the medical community is ill prepared to deal with other cultures. The American doctors were saddened by Lia's condition, which deteriorated to a vegetative state after a two-hour long seizure, but they never took the time to understand how to really communicate with the Hmong. Even the social workers did not really know how to communicate with them. Much of the clash of cultures was due to lack of a common language, but even more was due to arrogance and sheer ignorance. The social workers and doctors could not conceive of people who did not read, did not know how to tell time, and could not understand even basic commands, even if they were translated effectively. The Hmong were from a poor, agricultural culture, and things Americans…...

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References

Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. New York: The Noonday Press, 1997.

Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
I believe Anne Fadiman was trying to prove that it is possible to work through tough cultural barriers by showing the mistakes of Lia Lee's doctors. By showing these examples, and also giving examples of how culture can work together, Fadiman is trying to prove that the American medical system needs to have other socially accepted avenues of therapy to work alongside of conventional medicine. The health issues faced by the Hmong Lee family, both from patient's point-of-view and the family's point-of-view are affected by their adaptation to the United States and their feelings toward health care and health care providers. It is hard to know what Lia Lee thought of her epilepsy since the audience never hears her voice an opinion on the matter. It is crystal clear, however, what the Lee family thought the health issue was: quag dab peg, roughly…...

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References

Fadiman, A. (1997). The spirit catches you and you fall down: A hmong child, her american doctors, and the collision of two cultures.. New York, NY: Farrar, Staus and Giroux.

Within this clash of cultures, the Lee family did not know how to cope with the medical system in place to help Lia and her epilepsy. When they refused to give her the medications, Lia was removed from the home and placed in foster care. When the foster care parents gave her the prescribed medication, her condition worsened in several important ways. The foster parents believe that Lia's parents realized that, and that this is why they did not give her the medication, but did not have the cultural and language skills to communicate this to the medical staff.

Fadiman points out through example after example that the medical staff looked at Lia only as her illness, not as an individual, and certainly not as an individual part of a strongly developed culture that was markedly different than the hospital culture within which the doctors worked. Through a translator, a doctor…...

e. according to American norms and conventions. Part of this, incidentally, was due too to the fault of government itself that failed to provide them with the land, which the Hmong could have fertilized.
I realized that even thoguh America has gone a long way in attempting to appreciate other cultures and in refraining from foisting their own way of life on cultures other than they; they still do so to a certain extent.

I also wonder why people found it so hard to understand that others coming from lives so different than they would need time to acclimate and learn their 'language'.

Most of all I was impressed with the steadfastness, courage, and resilience of the Lees to resolutely cling to her traditions and way of life despite recrimination and hardship.

There are some things that are better in the Hmong culture than in the Western culture, such as the man's devotion to…...

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Reference

Fadiman, A. The spirit catches you and you fall down. Farrar & co., 1997

growing to adulthood in the United States, an young child and then an adolescence is encouraged to increasingly become more independent. By the age of three, many children are already going to nursery schools and then pre-kindergarten. In a restaurant or store, parents tell their kids to ask for help rather than doing it for them. By the time someone is an adolescent, he/she is expected to begin taking responsibility for school work and activities such as practicing musical instruments or sports. In high school, students are expected to begin planning their future in terms of education and careers. When college is over, they should ready to move into the mainstream and start their future lives and employees and parents of their own children.
Thus, most Americans usually believe that it is important to be autonomous and self-reliant. They know they are members of a community, city and the United…...

TANF Time Limits
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF for short, is one of the more controversial and maligned or one of the most lauded and touted social safety net programs in the United States. Whether it is praised or denigrated depends a lot on who is doing the talking and what their motivations are. TANF has turned in a political football on a scale that dovetails quite nicely with the words of awls (1985) when it was noted in an essay of that author that there are sometimes periods (some of them quite long in duration) that are bereft and full of political divisiveness and vitriol (awls, 1985).

History of TANF & its Predecessor

A bulk of the TANF program is to provide cash-based payments to needy families who are living in destitution or are otherwise in stark financial peril and how those funds are allocated, to who, for how…...

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References

Alcoff, Linda. "The Problem of Speaking For Others." Cultural Critique 20.1 (1992): 5-

32. Print.

Burns, M. (2010, October 28). Welfare Reform Failing Poor Single Moms, Books Claim. Pacific Standard - Politics, Health, Economy, Environment, Culture, Education. Retrieved April 16, 2013, from  http://www.psmag.com/politics/welfare-reform-failing-poor-single-mothers-24778/ 

CDSS. (2013, April 16). Child Welfare Services Stakeholder Group Questions and Answers. CA CDSS. Retrieved April 16, 2013, from  http://www.cdss.ca.gov/cdssweb/PG51.htm

Culture and Counseling
In her book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, author Anne Fadiman recounts the life and death of a little Hmong girl living in Merced, California. Lia Lee had what Western doctors call epilepsy, and which the Hmong have a far more lyrical explanation that lends itself to the title of Fadiman's book. The most common neurological disease, epilepsy can be frightening and potentially debilitating. However, in cultures around the world and throughout time, from the Hmong to the ancient Greeks, epilepsy opens pathways to creativity and an increased understanding of the universe. Thus, as Fadiman points out, many epileptics become shamans. When Lia Lee first started having epileptic seizures, her mom Foua, speaking not a word of English, rushed her to the Merced Community Medical Center. There, doctors tended to the eight-month-old child as best they could under the circumstances. Because all she was doing…...