- anorexia nervosa
- a culture-bound syndrome present in North American and European cultures, characterized by a person not eating to meet beauty standards.
- authoritative knowledge
- authority derived from perceived legitimacy, dependent on culture.
- biocultural approach
- the assumption that culture is informed by physical and sociocultural elements.
- biomedicine
- health care systems rooted in European and North American scientific knowledge.
- Blue Zones
- communities around the world with a high concentration of people near or over the age of 100.
- causal attributions
- a psychological concept used to study regular cultural behavior and how deviation from that behavior might be explained.
- clinical observations
- an ethnographic method resulting in a straightforward, clinical study of a medical situation.
- comorbidities
- two or more health conditions that often occur together.
- critical medical anthropology (CMA)
- a theory that highlights a culture’s inequalities, including inequalities in health care.
- critical theories of health
- an applied theory aimed at pointing out issues within health care systems and changing them for the better.
- cultural concepts of distress (CCD)
- a psychological term used to describe the way a culture experiences and expresses distress.
- cultural systems model
- a theory that that analyzes how systems within a particular culture, including health care systems, affect one’s worldview and actions.
- disease
- a biological agent that negatively affects health.
- epigenetics
- the changes in gene expression that take place during a person’s lifetime, often through environmental exposure.
- ethnomedicine
- a culture’s traditional knowledge and treatments for the management of health and illness.
- evolutionary medicine
- a method that uses evolutionary biology and culture to better understand human health.
- health
- a state of complete well-being.
- health decision-making analysis
- a study of the decisions that go into a person’s health choices.
- idioms of distress
- indirect ways that members of a culture show distress.
- illness
- a person’s experience of ill health, as defined by their culture.
- illness narrative interviews
- an ethnographic method used to collect information about an informant’s illness experience in their own words.
- malady
- a term encompassing disease, illness, and sickness.
- medical ecology
- a multidisciplinary theory studying the effects of environment on lifestyle and health.
- medical pluralism
- the use of both ethnomedicine and biomedicine.
- medical statistics
- statistics regarding treatments for medical illnesses that inform an anthropologist’s study, as well as medical policy and health choices.
- participant observation
- a methodology in which the anthropologist makes first-person observations while participating in a culture.
- placebo effect
- the effect in which belief in a treatment’s efficacy creates a positive health outcome.
- political economic medical anthropology (PEMA)
- a theory that highlights a culture’s inequalities, including inequality in health care.
- political economy
- the connection of economics and politics and how they affect wealth and inequality.
- psychobiological dynamic of health
- the measurable effect of human psychology on human biology.
- sick roles
- the social expectation of a person suffering from a sickness.
- sickness
- the cause of a person’s ill health that signifies to others how to treat that person socially.
- social health
- an acknowledgement that one’s social interactions and standing are an important aspect of overall health.
- structural violence
- violence caused by political and social systems that prevent groups from taking care of themselves in multiple ways.
- susto
- a cultural response to stress and trauma in Latinx communities.
- symbolic approach
- a theory focusing on how a culture’s symbols affect social and health outcomes.
- symbolic interaction approach to health
- and approach that focuses on the interaction between patient and caregiver(s).
- syndemics
- the social intersection of comorbidities in health outcomes.
- traditional ecological knowledge (TEK)
- traditional knowledge of one’s environment applied to the treatment of maladies.
- voodoo death
- death brought on by psychosomatic belief in cultural and environmental effects.