Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in this book. The book reveals the symbiotic relationship of disease, religion, and healing and their colliding values in Asia, which are often undetected in healthcare research. It adopts a multidisciplinary approach. Healthcare is a major worldwide social and political issue. It challenges the reader to rethink predominantly long-held Western interpretations of disease management and religion, and in turn to become more aware of plural and divergent healing models in local Asian contexts. A psychological statistical analysis of patient/practitioner interpretations makes it evident that conceptions of disease and maintenance of health are closely connected with the co-existence and accommodation of Chinese Medicine and biomedicine with religious interpretations and beliefs in divine intercession. The concept of an explanatory model has been extensively studied by medical anthropologists, sociologists, and other scholars to effectively explore patients' personal conceptualizations of illness that arise from socio-cultural contexts rather than from the restrictions of disease-based biomedicine.