Appalachian granny medicine

Domain XI · Traditional medicine & indigenous healing · 1880 · Southern Appalachia and the Ozarks

What it is

What it was. “Granny women” were mostly older women in Southern Appalachian and Ozark communities who served as midwives, herbal healers and people neighbours went to with their problems. A 2005 East Tennessee State University thesis dates their main period as midwives to roughly the 1880s–1930s,…

Format

• Granny medicine has no session structure or treatment protocol. The framework below is the therapist's own culturally responsive work, staged around the CFI.
• Session counts are. No time figure for the core CFI is verified; the DSM-5 field trial reports later interviews took less time but gives no minutes. The supplementary modules can be used at first evaluation, later, or repeatedly.

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• Who holds authority. There was never a licensing body, college or lineage council for granny women. Standing came from community recognition, age, experience, apprenticeship to another midwife and family transmission. Today authority over a client's own family remedies and beliefs rests with the client, their family and their church. Attending births is a regulated health profession under US state law. Cherokee…

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

• shame, religious guilt, dissociation. It is working when the client can name the experience and feel less alone with it.
• fatigue and the feeling of being studied. It is working when modules produce material you use in the plan, not just the record.
• concealment after past ridicule; a remedy used instead of urgent care (see 4.12). It is working when disclosure increases over sessions.
• fear of judgement causing concealment; past bad experiences of services. It is working when the client brings medical worries to you early.
• informants speaking over the client; family pressure to stop or start a remedy or medicine. It is working when the family become allies in the plan.

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.