The Spirit Catches You
In The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman narrates the story of Lia, a Hmong girl suffering from epilepsy who was surrounded by challenges due to conflicting viewpoints of her parents and her health care providers. For the Hmong people, epileptic seizures are viewed as a positive trait; those people who suffered from seizures are attributed to be a “twix neeb”, or “a person with a healing spirit” (Fadiman, 1997, pg. 21). Lia’s parents—Foau and Nao Kao (the Lees)—considered her condition as both a blessing and an honour. However, in some way, they also considered it as an illness because they made use of medical aid offered by doctors to relieve its clinical manifestations. A lot of the Hmong’s conflicting ideas
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In The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, the contrasting description of Lia’s illness by the Lees and the doctors serves as the main misunderstanding between them. This shows the lack of communication between both ends; and therefore, the lack of any doctor-patient/family relationship being established. Fadiman (1997) illustrates the problem when she explained that “Dan had no way of knowing that Foua and Nao Kao had already diagnosed their daughter's problem…[as] the spirit catches you and you fall down, [while] Foua and Nao Kao had no way of knowing that Dan had diagnosed it as epilepsy…” (pg. 28). Different diagnoses, or understanding of the health condition resulted into a conflicting approach to treatment. Lia’s doctors diagnosed the illness as epilepsy—a neurological disorder which had no cure; however, its symptoms of seizures can be controlled using medications (Fadiman, 1997, pg. 29). Consequently, Lia’s parents needed to commit and follow a strict regimen for the drug therapy to make positive changes in Lia’s condition. However, due to a different understanding of the illness, the Lees had some reservations about medications. According to Foa, it was good to take some medicine in conjunction with their shamanic rituals, but not too much, because it interferes with their effect (Fadiman, 1997, pg. 101). The Lees noncompliance to the doctor’s orders could have been prevented or redirected if the doctors took effort on understanding the significance of the soul to the Hmong people. Educating the family about the importance of medications, as well as supporting their efforts to seek spiritual help establishes the physician-family relationship. The miscommunication between the doctors and the Lees, or the lack thereof, is the primary reason Lia did not receive the treatment she
In The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, the contrasting description of Lia’s illness by the Lees and the doctors serves as the main misunderstanding between them. This shows the lack of communication between both ends; and therefore, the lack of any doctor-patient/family relationship being established. Fadiman (1997) illustrates the problem when she explained that “Dan had no way of knowing that Foua and Nao Kao had already diagnosed their daughter's problem…[as] the spirit catches you and you fall down, [while] Foua and Nao Kao had no way of knowing that Dan had diagnosed it as epilepsy…” (pg. 28). Different diagnoses, or understanding of the health condition resulted into a conflicting approach to treatment. Lia’s doctors diagnosed the illness as epilepsy—a neurological disorder which had no cure; however, its symptoms of seizures can be controlled using medications (Fadiman, 1997, pg. 29). Consequently, Lia’s parents needed to commit and follow a strict regimen for the drug therapy to make positive changes in Lia’s condition. However, due to a different understanding of the illness, the Lees had some reservations about medications. According to Foa, it was good to take some medicine in conjunction with their shamanic rituals, but not too much, because it interferes with their effect (Fadiman, 1997, pg. 101). The Lees noncompliance to the doctor’s orders could have been prevented or redirected if the doctors took effort on understanding the significance of the soul to the Hmong people. Educating the family about the importance of medications, as well as supporting their efforts to seek spiritual help establishes the physician-family relationship. The miscommunication between the doctors and the Lees, or the lack thereof, is the primary reason Lia did not receive the treatment she