In America the clash between cultures is inevitable due to the different backgrounds that make up the country --- especially when it comes to treating patients with drugs or more traditional methods. Conflict occurs in Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Takes You and You Fall, when Western medical culture clashes with Hmong practices. A daughter of a Hmong family, Lia, suffers from epilepsy and is brought to Merced Community Medical Center (MCMC) to seek treatment to relieve her seizure symptoms. As doctors and parents try to find ways to help Lia, they encounter cultural barriers such as differences in medical practice that inhibit their ability to help her effectively. MCMC doctors and parents are both responsible for increasing cultural conflicts due to their negative prejudices about each other long before they met. These negative prejudices were later reinforced by their lack of trust and respect as the book progressed. The Hmong have very little knowledge of American doctors, causing them to make negative assumptions about them. Their opinions of American doctors stemmed from the limited encounters the Hmong had with them in refugee camps. Because the camps were small medical centers for refugees where doctors could not meet the needs of every patient, these interactions had “done little to instill trust” (33) in doctors. The Hmong were taught to believe that American doctors could eat their patients' brains and "put their fingers in women's vaginas" (33). The Txiv neeb, their traditional doctors, would never have dared to perform any act that included taking off their clothes for check-up, or any procedure in which they would have to perform... middle of paper... .Due to cultural differences, it is important to build trust and respect between both parties, otherwise this will only lead to further misunderstandings. The cultural barrier between the Lees and the doctors was the result of their negative assumptions about each other. Both parties believed that their own treatment was the best way to help Lia deal with her epilepsy. Due to their inability to look beyond their own perspectives and remain in their own spheres, they have drifted further apart towards mutual understanding. It's usually harder to trust someone when you already have negative assumptions about them, making mutual trust nearly impossible. If doctors and parents had overcome these assumptions and looked at the situation from an uncontaminated perspective, they would have had a better chance of respecting each other in the beginning..