Indigenous, folk healing practices are nonorthodox therapeutic practices based on indigenous cultural traditions, operating outside of official (modern) healthcare systems.⁽¹⁾ These practices are often validated by experience, but are not founded on scientific principles. Indigenous healing practices are observed in ‘primitive’ or ‘pre-industrialized’ societies as well as in modern or developed societies. All healing practices or psychotherapies are more or less culturally influenced, including modern and orthodox psychotherapies, but indigenous healing practices are described as ‘culturally embedded’ because they are often intensely embedded in the cultural systems in which they were invented and in which they are practised. They are, therefore, usually very difficult to transplant to entirely different cultural settings, where they do not have the same meaning or legitimacy.⁽²⁾

While indigenous healing practices function in general as healing methods for problems, they are not usually considered by either the healer or the clients to be psychological therapy for the clients’ emotional or psychological problems. Rather, they are recognized as religious ceremonies or healing exercises related to supernatural or natural powers. However, from a mental health point of view, the indigenous healing practices often provide psychotherapeutic effects for the clients, and can be considered as folk psychotherapy.

Anthropologists have studied folk healing practices as a part of cultural behaviour. Recently, cultural psychiatrists have become interested in examining indigenous healing practices from clinical perspectives to explore the similarities and differences that exist between folk healing practices and modern psychotherapy, and to disclose the therapeutic mechanisms that are operating in and being utilized by indigenous healing practices. Many people in developed societies utilize folk healing practices as adjunctive to their primary (modern) therapy or as their main way to get help. Therefore, it is relevant for the modern psychiatrists to know what they are and the possible therapeutic mechanism they offer, or the possible negative effects they may receive by utilizing such indigenous healing practices.

Various practices are covered by the loosely defined terms, indigenous or folk healing. Religious healing practices and ceremonies are closely related to a specific religion. Shamanism involves a spirit medium. Divination, or various kinds of fortune-telling, including astrology or physiognomy, may be used by people to solve their psychological problems or to seek answers for life problems, and, therefore, can be viewed as folk counselling practices as well. Furthermore, the practice of meditation, a self-training exercise used to obtain tranquility, growth of mind, and prevention of emotional problems, can be considered a folk healing practice if one defines psychotherapy very broadly, as not only treating a suffering person but also providing a means for preventing problems and improving the quality of a person’s mental life.⁽³⁾

No matter what terms are used, indigenous healing practices share some common features. They are invented and utilized by local people for the purpose of solving problems or treating suffering—therefore, they are called indigenous in contrast to universal. They are distinctly different from the modern (Western or orthodox) professional medical approaches—thus, they are called folk practices. Most of them are supernaturally oriented and remote from any scientific orientation. Such indigenous practices are usually rooted in traditional beliefs and folk interpretations of problems, and, thus, are closely related to cultural beliefs.

Based on their core nature and their basic therapeutic orientation, healing practices observed in different societies can be subdivided into different categories namely, supernatural orientation (such as spirit mediumship, religious healing ceremony, and divination); nature orientation (such as fortune-telling, astrology, and meditation); medical-physiological orientation (such as mesmerism, acupuncture, and herb medicine); and socio-psychological orientation (such as Zen training, Alcoholics Anonymous, est, and most modern psychotherapy).^(4,5) It is recognized that such subdivisions are arbitrary, and often overlap. Yet these subcategories will help us to understand various healing practices that exist on a spectrum which includes the supernatural, natural, physiological, and psychological.