From social psychological point of view, we have approached the coping behavior of mentally handicapped and their families at the three neighbouring municipalities in Okinawan Island, where still flourishes the shamanism with indigenous faith healing system under the rapid infiltration of modern mental health care system. The main findings from the interview surveys administered to 203 patients and the intensive studies of 50 patients were as follows. (1) the six patterns of the coping behaviors. (2) the six factors influencing the coping behaviors: (a) complaints and behaviors of the sick person, (b) the attitudes of the sick person and his relatives toward the traditional culture, (c) sex and age norm, (d) physical and psychological distance to both health care systems, (e) the orientation by the agents in one system to the another, (f) the evaluation of the sick person and his relatives on the effects of the treatmet/healing. (3) the five stages of the reliance on the faith healing. Based on these findings and theoretical constructs, we examined three typical cases.
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