I may be exhibiting a little too much protectiveness over my field but as a member of the lesser understood social science, cultural anthropology, I must stand up and say, "Hey, that's our idea". An article recently published in Current Directions in Psychological Science titled Mind Over Matter: Patients’ Perceptions of Illness Make a Difference addresses the influence illness perceptions, and therein cultural assumptions of illnesses and medical care, have on treatment outcomes.

Medical anthropology has long used this fact to interpret how humans and medicine come into play. Don't get me wrong, the article synopsis below communicates what is so often not taken into considering when considering policy, education, insurance protocols, some treatment regimes (at least under the standard U.S. biomedical, evidence based medicine paradigm) and even patients themselves may not stop and say to themselves, "why don't I have a say?” No doubt the "existing literature" that was underwent a qualitative review was heavy on anthropology and ethnographic methods however the statement remains that "scientists don’t know much about how our illness perceptions develop in the first place" leaving us anthropologists wondering if we are being considered in that cohort of "scientists". This is an entirely different debate, that of whether or not anthropologists, especially us on the qualitative side of the field, "count" as (social) scientists. I'd like to speak for the fields of medical and psychological anthropology and say we do know much about how these perceptions develop and we would love to talk your ear off about them!

In all honesty, medical anthropology has been studying what these psychologists are concluding to in their “new” studies. I am ever trying to raise discussion about healthcare and like to include examples from outside our culture. After all, our healthcare system isn’t anything to boast about so I feel it’s about time we look to other cultures to see what they are doing differently.