behind and tried to calm him down.
Chapter 15
Sardar, Hast’s brother, who had recently started practicing medicine, didn’t believe that prayers had any effect. He believed that most faith-healers were either deceiving people or ignorant about what they were dealing with. Most of the patients identified as being ‘possessed’ by these faith-healers do not have a real physical disease. According to Sardar and many other doctors, these patients are usually suffering from psychological problems known as conversion and dissociative disorders. The afflicted patients usually had emotional problems which they usually do not want to declare or which reside in their subconscious. Their brains would then present the emotional problem in a form of a physical disability which could then be treated by controlling or coping with the original emotional problem residing in their subconscious.
The problem is those patients are seeking emotional care by their relatives or close friends and this is how the supposed faith-healers take advantage. They label the patients as having a possessed spirit and this makes others pity the patient and not hold them responsible for their behaviors. This is exactly what a patient with a conversion disorder wants and finds it comforting. Sardar usually tried to explain this point to his brother to demonstrate for him why a conversion disorder is sometimes responsive to faith-healing giving a fake impression that there is something supernatural about faith-healing.
Sardar remembered his first time in the Emergency ward when he was having his first night shift. On that evening, a 17 year old boy who was presumably unconscious and brought to the ER by his parents. Sardar immediately checked the boy’s pulse rate and all the other vital signs they were all normal, then he sent out for blood and sugar tests and they all returned normal. Sardar asked the mother whether the boy had experienced any emotional problems recently. The mother said that yesterday his son had a major argument with his father. To Sardar, this looked like a typical case of a conversion disorder. Here he had a young patient with a healthy medical history and normal medical tests which ruled out any physical disease.
However, the boy’s father denied that his son’s problem was emotional and due to the argument they had, so he started to accuse Sardar of misdiagnosis. Sardar tried to explain to the father that he didn’t blame his son’s condition on him.
“Your son has a conversion disorder. I can refer him to a psychiatrist so that he can be treated properly,” Sardar said to the father.
“Are you saying my son is crazy?” the father asked in an angry voice.
Sardar realized that he was talking to a very ignorant man so he gave up the case but warned the father that if didn’t take his son to a psychiatrist to receive proper treatment and advice, his son’s unconscious episodes would be repeated every time he encountered emotional distress.
What made Sardar’s frustration even more was when he realized that the father had taken his son to a faith-healer instead of a psychiatrist. He figured this out a couple of weeks later when his brother, Hast, brought him a recorded video of a local faith-healer called Mam Jameel who was residing in a nearby town to Erbil. In the videos Mam Jameel was showcasing the treatment of some patients he claimed they were ‘possessed’, and to Sardar’s surprise, one of the patients was the same the 17 year old boy. Again, the boy seemed to lie unconscious in front of the faith-healer. In the video, the faith-healer was reciting some words with smoke all around him and the boy’s body began to shake. After a few minutes, he woke up, fully conscious again. His father profusely thanked the faith-healer for saving his son from the bad spirit.
Sardar heard the father saying in the video that he had taken his son to so many doctors and none of them were able to diagnose what was
Chapter 15
Sardar, Hast’s brother, who had recently started practicing medicine, didn’t believe that prayers had any effect. He believed that most faith-healers were either deceiving people or ignorant about what they were dealing with. Most of the patients identified as being ‘possessed’ by these faith-healers do not have a real physical disease. According to Sardar and many other doctors, these patients are usually suffering from psychological problems known as conversion and dissociative disorders. The afflicted patients usually had emotional problems which they usually do not want to declare or which reside in their subconscious. Their brains would then present the emotional problem in a form of a physical disability which could then be treated by controlling or coping with the original emotional problem residing in their subconscious.
The problem is those patients are seeking emotional care by their relatives or close friends and this is how the supposed faith-healers take advantage. They label the patients as having a possessed spirit and this makes others pity the patient and not hold them responsible for their behaviors. This is exactly what a patient with a conversion disorder wants and finds it comforting. Sardar usually tried to explain this point to his brother to demonstrate for him why a conversion disorder is sometimes responsive to faith-healing giving a fake impression that there is something supernatural about faith-healing.
Sardar remembered his first time in the Emergency ward when he was having his first night shift. On that evening, a 17 year old boy who was presumably unconscious and brought to the ER by his parents. Sardar immediately checked the boy’s pulse rate and all the other vital signs they were all normal, then he sent out for blood and sugar tests and they all returned normal. Sardar asked the mother whether the boy had experienced any emotional problems recently. The mother said that yesterday his son had a major argument with his father. To Sardar, this looked like a typical case of a conversion disorder. Here he had a young patient with a healthy medical history and normal medical tests which ruled out any physical disease.
However, the boy’s father denied that his son’s problem was emotional and due to the argument they had, so he started to accuse Sardar of misdiagnosis. Sardar tried to explain to the father that he didn’t blame his son’s condition on him.
“Your son has a conversion disorder. I can refer him to a psychiatrist so that he can be treated properly,” Sardar said to the father.
“Are you saying my son is crazy?” the father asked in an angry voice.
Sardar realized that he was talking to a very ignorant man so he gave up the case but warned the father that if didn’t take his son to a psychiatrist to receive proper treatment and advice, his son’s unconscious episodes would be repeated every time he encountered emotional distress.
What made Sardar’s frustration even more was when he realized that the father had taken his son to a faith-healer instead of a psychiatrist. He figured this out a couple of weeks later when his brother, Hast, brought him a recorded video of a local faith-healer called Mam Jameel who was residing in a nearby town to Erbil. In the videos Mam Jameel was showcasing the treatment of some patients he claimed they were ‘possessed’, and to Sardar’s surprise, one of the patients was the same the 17 year old boy. Again, the boy seemed to lie unconscious in front of the faith-healer. In the video, the faith-healer was reciting some words with smoke all around him and the boy’s body began to shake. After a few minutes, he woke up, fully conscious again. His father profusely thanked the faith-healer for saving his son from the bad spirit.
Sardar heard the father saying in the video that he had taken his son to so many doctors and none of them were able to diagnose what was
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