Search

Mental disorders in Latin-America are highly prevalent and represent a significant burden on users and their families. These people most of the times have to deal with the stigma attached to the diagnosis they receive. Stigma towards mental illness causes negative consequences for patients and family members, becoming the main barrier to full social inclusion. Considering the above, the first objective of this paper is to analyze the main characteristics of stigma towards mental illness and the psychological and social variables with which it is associated. Secondly, we describe the main strategies for reducing different types of stigma. Finally, we propose approaches to assess and reduce stigma in the context of Latin-America and the Caribbean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every cognitive process, including the conceptualization of some perceived facts, such as human disease states, entails both an emotional as an evaluative aspect. Regarding this, cross-cultural research has shown that there are common human value contents. Therefore, in a human phylogenetic context, it is plausible to argue that, along with the development of our language, both the hetero-perception and self-perception of some specific human states have been termed descriptively to communicate their adaptive significance. This is the case of those human states whose properties have been conceptualized, with the corresponding evaluative emotional component, as "disease". Since names are the symbols of a language that designate any type of object, either perceptual or conceptual, reviewing the etymology of terms related to "disease" could be a contribution to its elucidation. In consequence, some equivalent terms to the Spanish word enfermedad were reviewed in various Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages. From the analyzed denominations we can conclude that the different words have described the perception of human conditions as weak, evil, suffering states, etc. Therefore, there is a denotative concordance with the diseased human states in the revised cultures.

In the study of the causes of disease that have arisen during the development of humankind, one can distinguish three major perspectives: the natural, the supernatural, and the artificial. In this paper we distinguish the rational natural causes of disease from the irrational natural causes. Within the natural and rational causal approaches of disease, we can highlight the Egyptian theory of putrid intestinal materials called "wechdu", the humoral theory, the atomistic theory, the contagious theory, the cellular theory, the molecular (genetic) theory, and the ecogenetic theory. Regarding the irrational, esoteric, and mystic causal approaches to disease, we highlight the astrological, the alchemical, the iatrochemical, the iatromechanical, and others (irritability, solidism, brownism, and mesmerism).

Like their prehistoric ancestors, the people of early civilizations lived related to the supernatural. Facing life-threatening situations, such as illness and death, people of ancient civilizations resorted to divination, prophecy, or the oracle. Regarding the curative activities of the ancient Greek civilization, there was a period in which these processes were exclusively linked to a supernatural perspective of the origin of disease. This stage of development of Greek healing practices corresponds to what might be called pre-Hippocratic Greek medicine. In ancient Greek civilization, myths exerted a strong influence on the concepts of disease and the healing processes. Although the first divine figure of Greek mythology related to medicine was Paeon, healing cults related to Apollo and Asclepius had a higher importance in tradition and Greek mythology. The Apollonian divine healing consisted in the ability to eliminate chaos and keep away evil, while in the Asclepian perspective, the role of healer was linked to specific procedures. Personal and medical skills allowed Asclepius to surpass his father and achieve his final consecration as a god of medicine.

The beginnings of the magical-religious conception of disease would go back to before the development of writing (prehistory). During ancient times the world was conceived as a place where the supernatural was essential for mankind's survival, therefore, explanations of all phenomena, including disease, were based on supernatural causes. With the development of Greek civilization began the establishment of a rational approach to the nature of the world, which gradually included medicine. But the origin of the rational and naturalist perspective of medicine is due in part to the influence of ancient Egyptian civilization. Various terms were used to refer to healing agents at the pre-Hippocratic period of ancient Greece: iatromantis, phôlarcos, ouliads, and asclepiads. Later, in the ancient Greek civilization, healing through prophecy was gradually replaced, though not entirely displaced, by a new medicine, based on a rational theoretical framework about health and disease: téchnê iatrikê.