Psychotherapeutic Components in Chottanikara Healing: A Qualitative Analysis
Keywords:
temple healing, neurotic conditions, cultural context, clinical accommodation, qualitative accountsAbstract
When the contextual management of a psychiatric condition is considered, the role of faith healing is crucial. When modern medicine replaced the religious explanations to health and illness by the scientific virtue of experimentation, faith healing was somehow pushed away from the mainstream treatment. There is a lacuna in terms of exploring the Psychotherapeutic benefits or rather, a psychological analysis of faith healing apart from numerous head counting and socio demography-oriented studies. The present study is an attempt to fill in this gap of exploring faith healing traditions in terms of their working mechanism and generating a therapeutic explanation of the same. The study aimed to explore psycho-therapeutic components in faith healing in psychiatric cases. The study considered the faith healing temple Chottanikara healing tradition. The total sample consisted of 100 out of which, 50 were neurotic patients according to ICD -10 and remaining 50 were caregivers visiting the healing Centre. Data was analyzed using interpretive phenomenological inquiry. Results and discussion indicated the psycho-therapeutic components in these healing traditions within the phenomenological framework by generating a central theme and sub-themes. The study implied the necessity of faith healing traditions to be a part of mainstream psychiatric practice, indicating the importance and relevance of clinical accommodation.
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