Santería / Lucumí

Domain XI · Traditional medicine & indigenous healing · 1800 · Cuba

What it is

Lucumí is an Afro-Cuban religion that formed in nineteenth-century Cuba among enslaved Yoruba people. Their religion absorbed elements of Roman Catholicism, and devotees honour spirits called orichas (orishas) through the iconography of Catholic saints. The US Supreme Court described the religion's…

Format

• This is a framework for culturally responsive psychotherapy with Lucumí practitioners, not a manualised treatment. No source gives a session count for this work. The phases below are, built on the CFI's structure and on the published criteria for possession and trance.
• Preparation and engagement (before and during session 1). Goal: examine your own reactions (for example to animal sacrifice or possession) and open a safe space for disclosure. Move on when the client is willing to talk about their religious life, or has clearly said they prefer not to.

Evidence status, as the guide reports it

• Treatment, integration and review (the usual course of the presenting problem's evidence-based treatment). Goal: deliver standard therapy adapted to the client's framework. Integrate religious experiences such as initiation, a possession episode or a reading, and keep safeguarding under review.…

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 fasting, a special diet or 'detox'? Have you discussed this with your doctor?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• 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

• notes that would read as stigmatising to a future clinician. It is working when you would be comfortable for the client to read the record.
• concealment learned from past discrimination, and internalised shame. It is working when the client corrects you, or brings religious material more freely.
• the therapist being recruited into a family argument over religion, and isolation if the client leaves a house. It is working when the client uses both networks deliberately.
• clients feeling torn between you and the house, and messages passed on in distorted form. It is working when the client experiences their religious and clinical care as allies.
• religious obligations as both support and stressor, guilt over unmet obligations, and spiritual distress. It is working when the client names religious resources they can draw on in treatment.

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.