Medical anthropology and symbolic cure: from the placebo to cultures of meaningful healing.

Medical anthropology and symbolic cure: from the placebo to cultures of meaningful healing. Anthropol Med. 2019 Oct 01;:1-16 Authors: Apud I, Romaní O Abstract The perspectives of medical anthropology on symbolic cure are crucial for understanding placebo mechanisms on the medical agenda. However, while classic biomedical conceptions of the placebo discredited cultural factors as legitimate therapeutic tools, the anthropological critical approach confronted this perspective in the opposite way, rejecting the role of neurobiological factors, and using culture as a self-contained phenomenon. This manuscript is a review of the symbolic healing, stressing the importance of an integrated and interdisciplinary study of the placebo response, and the need to go beyond both biological and cultural reductionisms. Various perspectives from medical anthropology will be described, ranging from classical to multilevel perspectives that enable consideration of the placebo in its neurobiological, psychological and cultural dimensions. PMID: 31569965 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Anthropology and Medicine - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Tags: Anthropol Med Source Type: research