Essay Sample about Cultural Diversity in the Health Sector

The spirit catches You and You Fall Down, by Fadiman portrays a powerful rivalry in cultural diversity through Lia who is epileptic and suffers from several seizures. Undeniably, Fadiman has successfully utilized various literal devices to convey the themes, characterization, and analysis of events through the actions of the characters, thereby enabling the readers to understand book's plot. However, the intention of the book is not Lia's illness, but to explain cultural diversity in the health sector. This essay responds to Fadiman's view of the constructions of power and medical care in the society brought about by religious and cultural diversity.

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The thorough one-on-one approach of ethnography evaluation contributed in generating and contextualizing the general full nature of epilepsy and other illnesses from the etic and emic perspectives of the narrative. The author was successful in explaining that patients with a strong religious belief have the right to get redemption from a religious culture or hospital chaplain instead of being forced into bio medics only. Nevertheless, with the lack of cultural acquaintance, the author feels that the family's thoughts for the bioethical approach of independence would have been successful through dialogue between the doctor and the family. "I came to understand that the deterioration in Lia's life was caused by cross-cultural miscommunications and not the parents' noncompliance" (Fadiman 262). Fadiman's narrative seemed to be the saddest to be possibly narrated ever. However, I feel that the author was able to bring out this complex narrative with the best admirable skill, powerfulness, intimate familiarity, and immense sensitivity. The book uncovers and shows the frailty and humility of all parties, a family viewed as culturally weak, facing discrimination and stigmatization by medics in emergency rooms which is not at all times scientific and normal as it would appear.

In the book, power, both medical and colonial, remains the crucial force behind the outcomes of medical care in most hospitals. In the Hmong medical care, the multicultural conflict has been portrayed as a stalemate in the diagnosis and treatment of the fascinating and mystifying issue of sudden death syndrome. But in overseeing cultural accounts of diseases such as those explained in Hmong including logical explanations from the health officials concerning sudden deaths, prompts some patients to decline medication. "The doctor found Hmong's problematic since they failed to comply with the treatment instructions" (Fadiman 37). The author here fails to support full speculation in Shamanism over Western treatment. Instead, she perceives that Lia's Merced medics ought to have honored the family's opinions. Fadiman feels that the family should have been inquired about their thoughts, listened to, embraced their Hmong culture and encouraged Shaman dialect to balance the cross-cultural tension (Fadiman 51). I feel that Fadiman tried to explain how theHmong's have been labeled ineradicably by the United States and how America has involuntarily accommodated them whereby earlier resistance have been fixed by trying to colonize, socialize, and pathologize them.

In Fadiman's narrative, America's population is progressively cross-cultural, and so are the medical practitioners. I think that the link between these diverse forces brings out the prospects for several forms of cultural war in the country's medical consultation rooms, including the association between medicine and religion. For instance, Fadiman's book tries to explain how the Hmong's culture discovers the cause and treatment of epilepsy and other diseases in spiritual basis. "The mystical cause of epilepsy is that something has made the soul to detach itself from the body" (Fadiman 28)."When Lia had her first epileptic attacks, the parents took her to search for medical care. 'The medical practitioners could treat her symptoms, but the Lee's upheld their cultural beliefs in addressing the religious facets of Lia's issue" (Fadiman 36). I think what Fadiman is trying to bring out is that even though Western medication can address several illnesses; there is still negligence among its practitioners in embracing different cultural believes of the patients. This diversity leads to a poor doctor-patient relationship and in turn, their treatment methods may bear little success and will in turn loose trust from its patients.

Concludingly I feel that the book tries to show how the world certainly looks different from diverse cultural perspectives. I cannot help but think of the inevitability of Fadiman's book or whether its ending could have been different or maybe it was just meant to end that way. The book has been described as a tragedy, a legal and controversial medical debate, an essay, and a story, but to me, it was a combination of all these perspectives. To me, the narrative was informative, enlightening, dramatic, and gripping. I think Fadiman brought out real experiences and general truths quite perfectly in a rare way. I also feel that the author made a great success in attempting to provide new insight into forced migration as well as cross-cultural issues. Fadiman also brings out the central perception of Western medications and a vibrant analysis of a botched system. The book generally gives sense to practices regularly viewed by foreigners as obstinate, irrational, and illogical, and portrays that these challenges are mostly down to cultural misunderstandings instead of non-mediation.

Work Cited

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