Candomblé

Domain XI · Traditional medicine & indigenous healing · Brazil

What it is

Candomblé is an Afro-Brazilian religion organised in autonomous houses (terreiros), each governed by a mãe de santo (ialorixá) or pai de santo (babalorixá). Scholarship describes three "great nations": Ketu, Jeje and Angola. In Ketu houses the divinities are the orixás. The Jeje and Angola nations…

Format

• Candomblé has no clinical phase model. The framework below is the psychotherapist's own course of culturally responsive care alongside a client's terreiro involvement.
• Phase A: Engagement and cultural assessment (sessions 1–3).

Evidence status, as the guide reports it

• Format: weekly or as indicated by the presenting disorder's own evidence-based treatment, with cultural review repeated at transitions (e.g. after initiation periods, conflict in the house, or experiences of religious racism).

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?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• How do you and the practitioner understand what is happening, in spiritual or cultural terms? Is that a source of comfort, worry, or both?
• 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

• interpreters who mistranslate or moralise religious terms. Working when: the client corrects your terms comfortably.
• stopping medication because of a spiritual reframing, or hiding use from the prescriber. Working when: the prescriber has the full picture.
• abrupt withdrawal from treatment presented as a religious requirement, which is a cue to talk with the client and not to assume. Working when: there are no unplanned gaps.
• the client editing answers to protect the house. Reassure them that you are not judging. Working when: the client tells you about religious care as readily as medical care.
• relatives pressing you to label the religion as the cause of the illness. Working when: you have a picture of the network's views without having breached the client's limits.

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.