Towards culturally inclusive healthcare in Peru: Mapping epistemic concepts in contemporary Indigenous Amazonian medicine-Traditional healers' perspectives.
PLOS global public health January 1, 2025 Ilana Berlowitz, Maria Amalia Pesantes, Cynthia Cárdenas Palacios et al. 6 citations
Indigenous-Amazonian medicine is an intricate medical system built on a sophisticated understanding of health, illness, and treatment. Traditional healers describe multifactorial causes of illness, complex interactions between material and spiritual aspects of body and nature, and treatments that often involve carefully designed applications of 'teacher plants'. Healers view traditional and biomedical systems as complementary, but identify lack of recognition as a primary barrier to collaboration. Preconceptions, stigma, and insufficient research impede countries from meeting Indigenous health needs and perpetuate inequalities. The findings highlight Amazonian healers' unique expertise with psychoactive plants, offering lessons for the revival of psychedelic-assisted therapies.