Perception of epilepsy by indigenous groups: Clinical conceptualizations Percepción de la epilepsia por grupos indígenas: Conceptualizaciones clínicas

Abstract

Epilepsy occurs with high incidence and prevalence rates; there are more than 50 million people diagnosed worldwide. From the Gospels and during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, magical and religious treatments predominated before epileptic crises; During the twentieth century, some indigenous populations continued to handle this disease with rituals. Objective: expanded review of the literature on the perception of indigenous people about epilepsy and its clinical manifestations. Methods: extended documentary review of qualitative and subject review studies, published between 1977 and 2013. Results: of 73 publications, 50 met the selection criteria, of these 22 were reviews of the topic, 11 qualitative and descriptive studies, and 17 documents conformed by books, conference proceedings, monographs and documents of the World Health Organization selected from the bibliographical citations of the selected articles. It was found that indigenous tribes in Africa think that epilepsy originates in the evil eye, spell or witchcraft; in Asia, traditional Chinese medicine attributes it to physical processes that block the cardiac system and in India, ayurveda to psychophysiological events. In America (south and center) the Peruvian Incas make a good description as to the origin, clinic and diagnosis, in Bolivia the Chipayas identify factors that trigger crisis and establish a prognosis, although the etiology attributed it to a bad spirit. The Mayas in Mexico and the Kamayurá in Brazil gave it a magic-religious connotation. Conclusions: a strong magical conception was found in all the tribes of the African territory, while in America there are differences between the groups, some with conceptions of organic origin such as the Incas of Peru and other cultures such as Maya, Uru-Chipaya and Kamayurá with magical perception. -religious.