Cross-Cultural Understandings of Mental, Physical, and Environmental Health

Presentation Location

David Student Union: Jefferson Room

Document Type

Event

Start Date

16-3-2024 10:30 AM

End Date

16-3-2024 12:00 PM

Description

(Nigar Sultana, Session Chair)

  • Obina Amuneke (Valdosta State University). How The Perception of Black People’s Mental, Physical, Spiritual and Environmental Health Has Changed After The Pandemic
    During the COVID-19 Pandemic, a deadly virus Impacted many people's lives, especially African Americans. This study aims to show how Black people have taken ownership of their mental, physical, spiritual, and environmental health. The authors used a qualitative method, conducting interviews of African Americans' health after the pandemic. Key guiding questions were, "Has the COVID-19 pandemic shaped 21 each dimension of health, or have impacts been experienced only in specific areas? Were effects positive or negative? The research found that African Americans took the initiative to take ownership of their physical and spiritual health more than their environmental and mental health.
  • Avery Hastings (University of West Georgia). The Effects of the Western Diagnostic Framework of ADHD on Diverse Cultural Groups
    It has been a common thought that attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a disorder that has the highest rates of diagnosis in the United States. More recent studies have shown that the prevalence of the disorder in other nations, based on western criteria, may be equal to the number of cases found in the United States. However, there has been little research or acknowledgement about how the diagnostic criteria for ADHD was developed by western medicine from a sample with little cultural diversity. There is also a lack of research into the impacts of imposing a westernized medical diagnostic system over other cultures’ medical institutions, especially those impacted by colonial practices. This paper seeks to find if western medicine’s development of the diagnostic criteria for ADHD accurately represents the experiences of those outside of westernized medicine, or if it is a form of medical ethnocentrism. Early results, viewed through a critical psychology and anthropological lens, shows that what western medicine deems ADHD behavior in other countries may be an inaccurate diagnosis within other culture’s medical systems.
  • Nigar Sultana (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa). Bleeding in Silence: Adolescent Girls’ Menstruation Experience and Social Construction in Rural Bangladesh
    Adolescent reproductive health relates to social explanations, norms, practices, and experiences depicting women as another class in society. This study reports on a qualitative comparative investigating how they assimilate and what are girls' and women's knowledge, practice, and perspective about menstruation. This study conducted 21 interviews, and data were gathered through unstructured and semi-structured interviews in a rural community in Bangladesh. The theoretical lens of the biopsychosocial model and lay theory of illness causation examine how girls and women feel and classify them as other social groups and how biological and social factors potentially lead to adverse health outcomes.
  • Shawn Phillips (Indiana State University). Bioarchaeology of Children's Diets: Did Boys Get Preferential Treatment?
    This study examines dietary and health markers in the skeletal remains of a rural Kentucky family spanning the years 1760 to 1940. Based on the results of multiple observations, it is suggested that boys received a preferential diet to their female siblings. Historians have suggested this practice existed in the colonial period due to the physical demands of farm labor. Given the division of labor, it is assumed then that male children had greater caloric and protein demands. The materials for this study are based on the documentary and archaeological records for the Holmes-Vardeman-Stephenson family cemetery (n=68) located in Lincoln Co., east central Kentucky. The methods include dietary markers (stable isotopes, skeletal, and dental observations), demographic tools such as life tables and survivorship patterns, and other skeletal observations such as stature and trauma. The study shows that male children achieved greater average stature in adulthood than female children in comparison to standard growth charts. Other data, such as stable isotopes and nutritional skeletal markers indicate female children likely consumed less protein than males and had a lower life expectancy. Though this cultural feeding pattern is suggested by historians in the colonial period of North America, it is not present in the historical records for this time and region. Thus, such a pattern can only be recovered through the archaeological record.

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Mar 16th, 10:30 AM Mar 16th, 12:00 PM

Cross-Cultural Understandings of Mental, Physical, and Environmental Health

David Student Union: Jefferson Room

(Nigar Sultana, Session Chair)

  • Obina Amuneke (Valdosta State University). How The Perception of Black People’s Mental, Physical, Spiritual and Environmental Health Has Changed After The Pandemic
    During the COVID-19 Pandemic, a deadly virus Impacted many people's lives, especially African Americans. This study aims to show how Black people have taken ownership of their mental, physical, spiritual, and environmental health. The authors used a qualitative method, conducting interviews of African Americans' health after the pandemic. Key guiding questions were, "Has the COVID-19 pandemic shaped 21 each dimension of health, or have impacts been experienced only in specific areas? Were effects positive or negative? The research found that African Americans took the initiative to take ownership of their physical and spiritual health more than their environmental and mental health.
  • Avery Hastings (University of West Georgia). The Effects of the Western Diagnostic Framework of ADHD on Diverse Cultural Groups
    It has been a common thought that attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a disorder that has the highest rates of diagnosis in the United States. More recent studies have shown that the prevalence of the disorder in other nations, based on western criteria, may be equal to the number of cases found in the United States. However, there has been little research or acknowledgement about how the diagnostic criteria for ADHD was developed by western medicine from a sample with little cultural diversity. There is also a lack of research into the impacts of imposing a westernized medical diagnostic system over other cultures’ medical institutions, especially those impacted by colonial practices. This paper seeks to find if western medicine’s development of the diagnostic criteria for ADHD accurately represents the experiences of those outside of westernized medicine, or if it is a form of medical ethnocentrism. Early results, viewed through a critical psychology and anthropological lens, shows that what western medicine deems ADHD behavior in other countries may be an inaccurate diagnosis within other culture’s medical systems.
  • Nigar Sultana (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa). Bleeding in Silence: Adolescent Girls’ Menstruation Experience and Social Construction in Rural Bangladesh
    Adolescent reproductive health relates to social explanations, norms, practices, and experiences depicting women as another class in society. This study reports on a qualitative comparative investigating how they assimilate and what are girls' and women's knowledge, practice, and perspective about menstruation. This study conducted 21 interviews, and data were gathered through unstructured and semi-structured interviews in a rural community in Bangladesh. The theoretical lens of the biopsychosocial model and lay theory of illness causation examine how girls and women feel and classify them as other social groups and how biological and social factors potentially lead to adverse health outcomes.
  • Shawn Phillips (Indiana State University). Bioarchaeology of Children's Diets: Did Boys Get Preferential Treatment?
    This study examines dietary and health markers in the skeletal remains of a rural Kentucky family spanning the years 1760 to 1940. Based on the results of multiple observations, it is suggested that boys received a preferential diet to their female siblings. Historians have suggested this practice existed in the colonial period due to the physical demands of farm labor. Given the division of labor, it is assumed then that male children had greater caloric and protein demands. The materials for this study are based on the documentary and archaeological records for the Holmes-Vardeman-Stephenson family cemetery (n=68) located in Lincoln Co., east central Kentucky. The methods include dietary markers (stable isotopes, skeletal, and dental observations), demographic tools such as life tables and survivorship patterns, and other skeletal observations such as stature and trauma. The study shows that male children achieved greater average stature in adulthood than female children in comparison to standard growth charts. Other data, such as stable isotopes and nutritional skeletal markers indicate female children likely consumed less protein than males and had a lower life expectancy. Though this cultural feeding pattern is suggested by historians in the colonial period of North America, it is not present in the historical records for this time and region. Thus, such a pattern can only be recovered through the archaeological record.