Mongolian traditional medicine

Domain XI · Traditional medicine & indigenous healing · Tsend Haidav · 1990 · Mongolia

What it is

TMM is a codified medical system with its own university training, state licensing, hospitals, pharmacopoeia and medicine industry. It is not a psychotherapy, and a psychotherapist does not practise it. Its practitioners are physicians called emchi (эмч), trained at university or private colleges…

Format

• This section has two layers: (A) the system as its institutions publish it, which the therapist needs to understand; (B) the therapist's own course of work alongside it.

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• Ministry of Health: oversees licensing and medical education through its Center for Health Development. The state has a national policy on developing Mongolian traditional medicine, with six aims: wider access at sub-district, district and general care levels; protecting and studying the textual heritage; new methods for conditions hard to treat with modern medicine; training and retraining practitioners; safe new…
• Professional body: the Association of TMM Doctors and Researchers (1999).
• Medicines regulation: safety requirements from 2002 test for "bacteria, fungi, and heavy metals"; a 2014 law required producers to register their drugs; a 2017 pharmacopoeia covered 80 single and 80 compound medicines. Seven official producers coexist with up to 50 unofficial manufacturers.

Evidence status, as the guide reports it

• Evidence status. No independent systematic review of TMM clinical effectiveness was located. The main recent review of Mongolian materia medica is pharmacological and largely preclinical. No TMM practice should be presented as a treatment for mental disorder or physical disease.

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Is there physical contact? Was it explained beforehand, and do you feel free to say no or stop at any point?
• Does it involve any substance, plant preparation, remedy or supplement? Has your doctor or prescriber been told, especially about any medication you take?
• Does it involve intense or unusual breathing? Have you been told about the medical conditions for which that is not advised?
• Does it involve fasting, a special diet or 'detox'? Have you discussed this with your doctor?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• unregulated imports; homesickness expressed as bodily complaints. Working when the client feels both systems are reachable and coordinated.
• reopening family trauma without consent or containment; romanticising the past. Working when the client experiences their choices as respected.
• the therapist prescribing diet or lifestyle in TMM terms; regimen used to avoid feared situations. Working when goals in both systems reinforce each other.
• fear that reporting will shame the family or community; under-reaction out of cultural caution. Working when the risk is addressed and the client stays engaged.
• turning modules into a checklist; family informants overriding the client. Working when the formulation names the client's spiritual, family and healer resources.

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.