Kleinman A, Gale J L
Cult Med Psychiatry. 1982 Dec;6(4):405-23. doi: 10.1007/BF00118886.
Outcome of 118 patients treated by shamans in Taipei, Taiwan, is compared with that of 112 roughly matched patients treated by physicians. Impressive among the chief findings at time of follow-up evaluation, more than three-fourths of patients in both groups across five distinctive sickness types perceived their health problems as improved and were so evaluated by the research staff. Patient attributions of source of therapeutic efficacy were more complex and ambivalent. Counter to our hypothesis a higher proportion of patients were dissatisfied with shamanistic treatment than with biomedical care, and this held true even for somatization patients with psychiatric problems. The findings are interpreted with respect to serious limitations on research design and methods that pertain to this and, we believe, any other study of indigenous healing. These limitations call into question certain of the findings in particular, and illustrate why assessments of therapeutic outcome, besides reflecting biological constraints, should be recognized as differential cultural construals of socially constructed reality.
将台湾台北地区由萨满巫师治疗的118名患者的治疗结果，与由医生治疗的112名大致匹配患者的治疗结果进行比较。在随访评估时的主要发现中，令人印象深刻的是，在五种不同疾病类型的两组患者中，超过四分之三的患者认为他们的健康问题有所改善，并且研究人员也如此评估。患者对治疗效果来源的归因更为复杂和矛盾。与我们的假设相反，不满意萨满治疗的患者比例高于生物医学治疗，即使对于有精神问题的躯体化患者也是如此。针对该研究以及我们认为的任何其他本土疗法研究在研究设计和方法上的严重局限性，对这些发现进行了解释。这些局限性尤其使某些发现受到质疑，并说明了为什么治疗结果评估除了反映生物学限制外，还应被视为对社会建构现实的不同文化解读。
