Attitudes of patients with psychiatric illness toward traditional healing

The role of traditional healers in the community remains an issue of debate as they have a role in the community that could not be neglected. Traditional medicine can be a barrier for early intervention and treatment of psychiatric disorders.

This study is a cross-sectional descriptive study that aims to evaluate the attitude of patients toward traditional healing in Khartoum teaching hospital in Sudan.

Patients who attended the outpatient clinic were asked about previous history of seeking treatment from traditional healers. A specific questionnaire was introduced to participants. Descriptive statistics was used to describe the data variables, and tabulated tables were used to calculate chi-square test for categorical data and the significance was set at p < .05.

From a total of 131 subjects, there were 111 (84%) of patients who reported previous history of seeking traditional treatment for psychiatric illness. No significant difference was found between the two groups in terms of psychiatric diagnosis ( p = .559) or sociodemographic characteristics including age ( p = .740), gender ( p = .469) and educational level ( p = .226). The decision of seeking traditional treatment was mostly taken by families and the patients took the decision in only 27% of cases. The majority of participants (55.9%) believe that their psychiatric symptoms are due to evil eye, and 20.7% believe that the symptoms are due to magic. The type of traditional treatment was significantly related to gender ( p = .003) but not related to level of education ( p = .137).

The vast majority of psychiatric patients have history of receiving traditional healing, and the decisions regarding treatment are taken by family in most of the cases. Further research is needed to evaluate future projects of providing psychoeducation to the community and to invite traditional healers to participate in channels of referral for cases that need early intervention with psychotropic medications.