Magic-Religious practices in chronic diseases at in a third level hospital (Mexico)

Abstract

The religious system intersects within the health system. Religious practices seek the intervention of divine actors through practices, prayers, rites and rituals. In turn, magical practices are described as everyday symbolic precepts to which power is attributed to achieve technical and utilitarian ends without the intervention of a sacred rank or being. We sought to characterize the ideal type of magical-religious practices carried out by mothers of patients with chronic diseases, cared for in a tertiary care hospital. In-depth interviews were conducted with 12 mothers of children with various chronic illnesses. In all of them, they used the magico-religious practices as emotional self-care when facing loneliness and crises in their environment, in order to feel tranquility and peace in search of well-being of them and their children. Because of the widespread use of magico-religious practices, it is necessary to understand how they go through the health-disease process to balance the tension between the biomedical and the religious-spiritual in the search for social and spiritual wellbeing of chronically ill children.