summarizes the cultural phenomena affecting American Indians, Aleuts, and Eskimos.
222 ■ Chapter 9
■ Current Health Care Problems Today, American Indians are faced with a number of health-related problems and health disparities. Many of the old ways of diagnosing and treating illness have not survived the migrations and changing ways of life of the people. Be- cause these skills often have been lost and because modern health care facilities are not always available, American Indian people are frequently caught in limbo when it comes to obtaining adequate health care. Many of the illnesses that are familiar among White patients may manifest themselves differently in American Indian patients. Native peoples experience higher disease rates and lower life expectancy than any other racial or ethnic group in the country. The rates of diabetes, mental disorders, cardiovascular disease, pneumonia, influenza, and injuries of Indians are exponentially higher, the infant mortality rate is 150% greater for Indians than that of White infants. As alluded to at the beginning of this chapter, suicide rates among the young are high—a rate that is more than 3 times that of the general population (Nieves, 2007, p. A-9) and life ex- pectancy is 5 years less than the rest of the U.S. population. The impact of this is felt throughout the community. In addition, at least one third of American Indians exist in a state of abject poverty. With this destitution come poor living