Causal attributions were divided into eight categories:
(1) sorcery/witchcraft (including black magic, curses, evil
eye, bewitchment), 12 studies; (2) punishment from God
(including implications from God, divine wrath, God’s
will, making God angry, breaching the taboos of God), 9
studies; (3) possession (including spirit intrusion and
exorcism), 8 studies; (4) evil spirits, 7 studies; (5) cosmic
(including fate/predestination, unfavorable horoscope, evil
done in previous life, imbalance of Yin and Yang, and
planetary influences), 5 studies; (6) lack of or misguided
faith, 4 studies; (7) ancestors (communication from and
angering ancestors), 3 studies; and (8) unspecified, 2
studies. Two studies (Furnham et al. 2008; Milstein et al.
2000) had an unspecified causal attribution and only stated
that the causal attributions were supernatural in nature.
The most frequent causal attributions from the public
perspective were sorcery/witchcraft, punishment from God,
and possession. The most frequent causal attribution from
the family perspective was sorcery/witchcraft. The most
frequent causal attributions from healers’ perspective were
sorcery/witchcraft, evil spirits, and ancestors. The most
frequent causal attributions from Christians were possession and lack of/or misguided faith. Most studies found
evidence for religious/supernatural causal attributions for
schizophrenia; however, some studies found a lack of
evidence for such attributions. Srinivasan and Thara (2001)
found that families in India rarely subscribe to a supernatural causal attribution of schizophrenia, and Swami
et al. (2008) did not find evidence that the sample of the
public had religious or supernatural beliefs about the etiology of schizophrenia.