Religious and cultural aspects of psychotherapy in Muslim patients from tradition-oriented societies

Abstract

Patients from collective cultures with a tradition-bound Islamic cultural background (e.g. people from the Middle East and some Far-East countries such Pakistan and Indonesia), have a different perception of disease and different conceptions of healing, which up till now have not been sufficiently appreciated in modern multimodal therapeutic approaches and health management. Taking patients’ value systems into consideration in a culture-sensitive way, with reference to their notions of magic, healing ceremonies and religious rituals and especially patterns of relations and experience in the treatment of psychological diseases in medical psychotherapeutic work, with due regard to scientific psychotherapeutic standards, can be used as an intercultural resource and lead to establishing partnership-like relationships between patients and therapists.

Declaration of interest: The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the paper.