Ethnic minorities underutilize mental health services, and when they do seek treatment, dropout rates are high. The need for culturally sensitive therapies that incorporate the spiritual values of the minority client cannot be overstated.

Authors Ricardo Carrillo, PhD, and Concepcion Martinez Saucedo, PhD, argue that traditional Mesoamerican healing approaches to mental health issues can and should be used by a wide variety of health care practitioners and those in supportive roles, including psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers.

In Cultura y Bienestar: MesoAmerican Based Healing and Mental Health Practice Based Evidence, these two experts discuss the efficiency and potential of such traditional practices as Mexican curanderismo, medicina papalote (butterfly medicine), and medicinal drumming.

Traditional healing practices view the physical, the mental, and the spiritual as a unified system-unlike the Western approach to mental health and its tendency toward reductionist, symptom-based treatment. Mesoamerican healing also places the patient within the larger context of the community.

What Carrillo and Saucedo suggest is nothing less than a revolution in mental health services, blending allopathic care and traditional healing with Western methodologies to create a culturally inclusive care system that acknowledges and respects the spiritual values of minority clients.