title: The doctor's medicine and the ambiguity of amulets: life and suffering among Bangladeshi psychiatric patients and their families in London--an interview study--1.
abstract: An interview study of 44 Bangladeshi patients and relatives in London demonstrated simultaneous trust in psychiatrists as well as in the widespread use of healing amulets. At the same time, local Islamic clerics and traditional healers were seen by many with some degree of suspicion. The authors offer an interpretation in which local healers and their methods are regarded ambivalently: the more distant biomedical framework fits with the newer modernising 'High' Islam (literate, scripturalist, puritanical, unitarian, urban, clerical, perhaps masculinist), as opposed to Hindu-inflected traditional Sufi Islam in Bangladesh (peasant, popular, syncretic, saintly, magical, ecstatic and possibly more sympathetic to women's experience).
authors.affiliation: a Departments of Anthropology and Mental Health , University College London , Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
authors.forename: Roland
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Littlewood
authors.forename: Simon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dein
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001294:Attitude to Health; D001459:Bangladesh / Q000208:ethnology; D003469:Culture; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D007514:Islam; D008131:London; D008297:Male; D008519:Medicine, Traditional; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy*; D008875:Middle Aged; D011570:Psychiatry; D035502:Trust; D055815:Young Adult