spiritual and physical ailment. According to Fadiman (1997)‚ “…the noise of the door had been so profoundly frightening that her soul had fled her body and become lost. They recognized the resulting symptoms as qaug dab peg‚ which means ‘the spirit catches you and you fall down’”(p.20). To the Lee family‚ Lia’s condition was as revered as it was frightening. While a person with qaug dab peg was traditionally held in high esteem in the Hmong culture‚ it was also terrifying enough that the Lee’s rushed
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Option 3: Risk and Protective Factors Risk factors are defined as the conditions or events that increase the chance of unwanted negative mental health outcomes. Protective factors are assets or resources that help to offset or prevent a negative mental health outcome. Throughout my life thus far‚ I have experienced several risk factors as well as several protective factors that shaped who I am today in terms of my mental health and well-being. The textbook also explains four mechanisms that help
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Praise for The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down “Fadiman describes with extraordinary skill the colliding worlds of Western medicine and Hmong culture.” —The New Yorker “This fine book recounts a poignant tragedy…It has no heroes or villains‚ but it has an abundance of innocent suffering‚ and it most certainly does have a moral…[A] sad‚ excellent book.” —Melvin Konner‚ The New York Times Book Review “An intriguing‚ spirit-lifting‚ extraordinary exploration of two cultures in uneasy
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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down tells the story of Lia Lee‚ a Hmong child with epilepsy‚ whose tragic downfall reveals the dangers of a lack of cross-cultural communication in the medical profession. At the age of three months‚ Lia had her first seizure caused by the sound of a door being slammed shut‚ by her older sister Yer. Their parents‚ Foua and Nao Kao believed that the sound of the door had caused Lia’s soul to flee‚ they called her illness “qaug dab peg”‚ which means “the spirit catches
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They believed it translated into Qaug dab peg. What was misunderstood is that quag dab peg were not really perceived as the same thing in Hmong culture as Epilepsy is in western medicine. In the Hmong culture‚ QDP is believed to be caused by a bad spirit called a dab. It is believed that dabs are responsible for stealing souls and making its victims sick. Epilepsy is recognized by western medicine as a serious neurological condition. Although Epilepsy and Quag dab peg may have the same physical symptoms
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For the second reflection paper I chose to write about the book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. When I started reading this book‚ I had no idea what I was going to read about. I learned many new concepts on the culture of Hmong and their views. A brief section of the book also was about how they came to America and the experiences they had while doing so. I learned that there was a secret war in Laos that caused a tragedy among the Hmong people leaving them to abandon their homes in the
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“The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down‚” tells a story about a Hmong child Lia Lee‚ who suffers her first epileptic seizure at three months of age. Her treatment becomes difficult to go through because of her parents‚ Nao Kao and Foua‚ inability to speak English. They cannot speak to the doctors and many problems follow because of it. It started when Lia was three months old when her sister had slammed the front door. Quickly after‚ “Lia’s eyes rolled up‚ her arms jerked over her head‚ and she
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1. The traditional Hmong birth practices are so different from the birth practices we use here in the United States. Foua’s previous child births before Lia were very different. She gave birth inside her home‚ with completely no help. She also cut and tied the umbilical cord with a string. Afterwards they buried the placentas as a tradition to their beliefs. Now‚ with Lia’s birth she was in a public hospital where she was attended by doctors and given medicine. It was also sanitary there‚ unlike
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an illness may be completely different than another. These different views and opinions can often cause cultures to collide when a doctor is summoned to treat an individual of a different culture than their own. Anne Fadiman’s book‚ The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down‚ tells the story of an epileptic Hmong child and her collision of two cultures. Lia Lee began suffering seizures at a young age and was diagnosed with epilepsy by American doctors. Her family however believed her illness was caused
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cultures and ethnicities. This newfound experience taught me that people see and interpret things differently and that cultural beliefs are not the only factors that influence differences in opinion. The community‚ environment‚ and even one’s friends can also contribute to the way a person interprets things. One example is‚ “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down‚” a book about the struggles faced by the Lee family after emigrating from Laos to America. Foua delivered her 14th child‚ only this
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