Whether it's shamans from Ecuador to Russia or Christian religious leaders from the US, various regions and religions across the globe use faith healers. Religious healers may have little to no psychology or medical related background, and earn their living by performing religious rituals and healing people from supernatural issues such as possession. According to one Stanford University researcher, "The concept and practice of exorcism crosses cultural and historical boundaries."
Muslim communities in the Middle East use faith healers, too: According to the Pew Research Center, approximately half of the population in Iraq (47 percent), Egypt (44 percent), the United Arab Emirates (45 percent) and Jordan (42 percent) use traditional Islamic healers. "Popular beliefs in Middle Eastern cultures," states a report in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry, "have traditionally viewed mental illness as a punishment from God, the result of possession by evil spirits (Jinn), the effects of the 'evil eye' or the effects of evil in objects that are transferred into the individual."
Abdul Majeed Ali Hasan, an imam in the Ministry of Islamic Affairs for the UAE government, stated in an interview that the majority of "possession" cases are in fact psychological illness "wrongly assumed to be possession." He also revealed that people's superstition often causes them to think they themselves are possessed.
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