How do different cultural groups illustrate how different societies label pathology?

A lot of cultures attribute the etiology (or origin) of a disease to non-natural causes. In western societies, medical doctors typically use a "naturalistic perspective" when diagnosing or treating patients. For them, treatments are rooted in biomedical research and diagnoses are based on the pathophysiology of the patient. In other societies, such as the Hmong of China, illness and disease are linked to "personalistic explanations" of disease causation. They approach a pathology by looking at the spirit, not the body, of the afflicted patient (e.g., an epilepsy attack might be attributed to the soul leaving the body).

This can turn into a problem when personalistic explanations clash with naturalistic explanations in a clinical setting. Taking a child off her chemotherapy treatment and turning towards alternative medicine and prayer is one example of this (yes, this really did happen).