Socio-cultural Influences on the Promotion and sustenance of Peoples’ Health in Compelling Powers of Mimesis of Twins’ Death while using the dead Twins’ Caskets and Graves

Abstract

The cultural belief of mimicking twins’ death is an old Lesotho burial rite practice that places at disadvantage the power of a people in taking personal health-related choices for individual and group health promotion and overall benefits. The study investigated the cultural impact of twin burial rites in Maseru, Lesotho on the individual mental capacity to promote and sustain adequate health behaviour. It equally examined the extent to which this practice was helpful to twinless’ overall life adjustment and the emotional consequences following the burial of twins. The study utilized 378 participants selected through the simple random sampling method from both rural and urban population of Lesotho. Multiple Regression statistical analysis at the 0.05 alpha level was the main statistical method employed. The results indicated overall, that age, educational, literacy and religious affiliations factors of the participants did significantly (P<0.05) and (P<0.01) affect respondents knowledge, psycho-social and emotional levels as they perceive twinless-grave-site-lying whenever a twin dies before the burial of the dead twin in Lesotho. Furthermore, the results found that while 94.8% of the participants submitted that the practice of compelling casket and grave site lying of the twinless was age-long, another 51.6% were undecided in terms of whether the burial rite/ practices was or was not beneficial to the living twinless even though 96.8% categorically said that the practice was really not acceptably comfortable to the living twinless overall. Since the burial rite practices in Lesotho therefore limits the individual (otherwise, people) capacity to take preventive measures against the onset of a consequent psychological and emotional trauma, a governmental policy statement through the collective people ideas should be adopted in its stoppage. Additionally, the stoppage of such cultural burial rite becomes imperative in motivating individual empowerment for initiating increasing control and to improve the personal health of people. 

Keyword: Health Promotion, Culture, Casket/grave-side Burial of Twins, Psychological trauma,  Mental Health, Lesotho