The curandero's apprentice: a therapeutic integration of folk and medical healing.

The author discusses alternative methods for dealing with folk illness in psychotherapy. Two case reports are presented that describe psychotic Mexican-American patients who were successfully treated with an approach that integrated curanderismo, the Hispanic concept of healing, and traditional therapy. The author discusses ethical aspects of this integrated approach and suggests that cultural considerations can be successfully incorporated into a treatment plan of optimum benefit for the individual patient.