Home remedies and granny cures

Domain XI · Traditional medicine & indigenous healing

What it is

Home remedies are the teas, foods, rubs, powders, tonics and small rituals of care that households use for everyday illness, usually before or alongside formal health care. WHO's definition of traditional medicine starts with "the sum total of the knowledge, skill, and practices" based on theories,…

Format

• Phase A: Opening the topic (session 1, continuing).
• Format: a few questions inside intake, plus one routine line on any medication or substance review.

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• Who holds authority. No licensing body or lineage governs household remedies. Authority sits with the family, typically elder women such as grandmothers and mothers, and with local lay healers whom the community recognises. Public-health bodies such as the CDC and state lead-poisoning programmes publish warnings about specific contaminated products. The psychotherapist does not prescribe, prepare or evaluate…

Evidence status, as the guide reports it

• What it is. Home remedies are the teas, foods, rubs, powders, tonics and small rituals of care that households use for everyday illness, usually before or alongside formal health care. WHO's definition of traditional medicine starts with "the sum total of the knowledge, skill, and practices" based…

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• 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?
• 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 read as mocking or exoticising. Working: the client would be comfortable reading their record.
• the informant's view overriding the client's. Hold both views and note where they differ. Working: you understand who in the family decides about remedies and care.
• the clinician taking sides; elders feeling displaced; the client being caught between loyalty and autonomy. Working: the family can talk about remedies openly in the room.
• using a glossary term the client never used; equating an idiom with a disorder; missing a disorder behind an idiom. Working: the client uses their own term freely with you.
• feeling superior or nostalgic; assuming every member of a group uses the same remedies. Working: you can ask about remedies in a neutral, curious tone and clients say more over time.

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.