Grace Sesma works methodically to set up her home office, lighting candles and cutting thorns from seven stemmed red roses for the day’s first session as her client chatters nearby.
The man, 47, is talking fast — about the nice view of the area from Sesma’s backyard, his connection to the San Diego area, and how he got the supplies at the last minute that Sesma told him they would need: roses, an egg and tobacco.
A survivor of childhood sexual abuse, he has used binge drinking as a coping mechanism. He’s been seeing a therapist and was recently diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Therapy has helped him identify his behavior and triggering environments, but he still hasn’t come to terms with the sexual abuse he suffered, he said; he wants to be at peace with himself.
That’s why he has traveled to Alpine, a small mountain community northeast of San Diego, to see Sesma. A therapist can teach him coping skills, but Sesma is here to help him repair his spirit.
Sesma, 65, is a Mexican and Yaqui curandera, or traditional healer. Clients come to her home office, in Alpine or Colorado, for a range of needs, including PTSD, nervios (panic attacks), susto (trauma), depression and spiritual counseling.
This wasn’t her first line of work. Sesma spent several years as an administrator of a partial-hospitalization psychiatric program and founded a cultural consulting firm, but she felt called by her ancestors to follow a spiritual healing path and serve her community.
“The philosophy behind curanderismo is that diseases are not just caused by physical factors, but also social, emotional, environmental and spiritual ones,” Sesma said.
Sesma is part of a world of traditional healers who are generally not considered by Western medicine to be a part of the mental health system, but for their clients, especially among a subset of Latinos, Chicanos and Indigenous peoples from Latin America, these spiritual healers offer a type of support they may trust more than therapists.
Data continues to show that Latinos do not seek out therapy or other mental health support at the same rates as other racial or ethnic groups. An increasing number of Black, Asian and white Americans are seeking out mental health treatment while the rate of Latinos remains near stagnant, according to a recent analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This could be in part because of relatively low numbers of Latino mental health providers, a fact that could affect who seeks treatment as some patients want a provider who understands their cultural background. Stigma surrounding mental health conversations and services could be another factor. Little data, if any, is collected on those who seek support from spiritual healers.
Both healers and researchers say Latinos and other Southern Californians, who aren’t necessarily connected to the culture, often turn to curanderismo when they’ve felt Western medicine didn’t meet their needs. It is difficult to definitively measure the medical benefits of spiritual healing, but these same experts point out that an integrative approach with doctors and healers working together in clinics arguably produces benefits beyond those easily documented in an X-ray or CT scan.
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