Reconceptualizing Native Women's Health: an "indigenist" Stress-coping Model

Overview

Journal Am J Public Health

Specialty Public Health

Date 2002 Mar 29

PMID 11919043

Citations 130

Authors

Karina L Walters

Jane M Simoni

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

This commentary presents an "indigenist" model of Native women's health, a stress-coping paradigm that situates Native women's health within the larger context of their status as a colonized people. The model is grounded in empirical evidence that traumas such as the "soul wound" of historical and contemporary discrimination among Native women influence health and mental health outcomes. The preliminary model also incorporates cultural resilience, including as moderators identity, enculturation, spiritual coping, and traditional healing practices. Current epidemiological data on Native women's general health and mental health are reconsidered within the framework of this model.

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