J. Appl. Environ. Biol. Sci., 5(6)40-42, 2015 © 2015, TextRoad Publication ISSN: 2090-4274 Journal of Applied Environmental and Biological Sciences www.textroad.com *Corresponding Author: Muhammad Anshari, Health sciences faculty of public health Airlangga university, Surabaya Indonesia. E-mail: ans1167@yahoo.com Ethnomedicine of Dayak Paramasan Ethnic in the Meratus Mountains (part-2): A Correlation of Spiritual Belief and Distress Level to Patient who had Done Ethnomedicine Treatment (Pelungsur and Basambur) Muhammad Anshari 1 *, Tri Martiana 2 , Suhartono Taat Putra 3 , L. Dyson 4 1 * ) Health sciences faculty of public health Airlangga university, Surabaya Indonesia; 2 Departement occupational health and safety Public Health faculty Airlangga university; 3 Department of Pathology. pathobiology division and courses of traditional medicine, faculty of medicine, University of Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia; 4 Department of Anthropology Faculty of Social and Political Science University of Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia Received: February 13, 2015 Accepted: April 27, 2015 ABSTRACT The handling to disturbance disease needs a treatment and certain curative action. According to Dayak Paramasan Ethnic, the use of Babalian Ethnomedicine is effective and safe to cure a disease that they have suffered. Based on the phenomenon above, the concoction herb (pelungsur) and babalian ceremony (basambur) are used by Dayak Paramasan, Banjar to cure any health problems which cannot be explained before. The aim of research was to know the correlation of spiritual belief and distress level to patient who had been done ethnomedicine treatment in dayak paramasan ethnic, mountain of meratus. This research was analytic observational research by using cross sectional approach toward society who has accepted ethnomedicine treatment (basambur and pelungsur) in Paramasan Bawah village, Paramasan subdistrict, Banjar,South Kalimantan by taking 30 samples of respondents. Instrument research was distress questionnaire from General Health Questionnaire/ GHQ-28 (Goldberg, 1979) and spiritual belief Questionnaire (King, 2006). The data of this research applied Pearson Correlation to analyze the correlation between spiritual belief and distress with a degree of meaning a = 0.05. There was a relation between spiritual belief and distress level (p < 0.05), in which strong spiritual belief caused low level distress. In a low level distress, it will reach physiological cortisol level to increase immunity and to encourage the process of recovery. A purpose of Basambur is giving coping (Meaning Making Coping), the process in integrating an appraisal from illness that has been suffered with individual global meaning, so it decreases discrepancy between global meaning and situational meaning, it will strengthen the function of concoction herb that has been used (pelungsur) and it also increases biological response such as increasing immunity. KEYWORDS: spiritual belief, distress level INTRODUCTION Dayak Paramasan ethnics still hold on their heritage culture. One of them is the use of Babalian ethnomedicine to cure disease that they have suffered. According to this community, ethnomedicine is very effective and safe. It consists of two components that are concoction herb and rituality for curing of illness which called as Babalian ceremony (for chronic illness) and Basambur. A belief of Paramasan Meratus Ethnic is usually called as Balian which emphasizes to ceremony such as ceremony in the process of rice cultivation or harvest time. In that spirituality of Balian, every single creature both live and dead, all of them have soul. Human being must unite with a nature (soul of creature and thing), they have obligated to build harmonious life with an environment (soul). Based on spirituality of Balian, certain disease caused by disturbance of certain spirit in which the form of in harmonious between individual relation and spirit. In this case, a ceremony exists to build harmonious relation with a spirit. Spirituality is a point of global meaning in model Meaning-Making theory (Park and Folkman, 1997; Park, 2013). This model explains that there are two levels of meaning include global meaning and situational meaning (Park and Folkman, 1997). Perception is formed from the result of giving sense in stressor (event, incident and illness) that causes incongruent between global meaning and situational meaning, then it creates distress (Park, 2000). Stressor is situational meaning which becomes discrepant (incongruent) toward global meaning, then it will burden with psychological resistance of someone, so that it will create distress. Distress is negative stress which can happen when a level of stress too high or too short where body and mind begin to perceive stressor negatively. Distress is kind of pathology that will impact to health and mortality risk (Russ, 2012; Salleh, 2008). Chronic Distress, will suppress the psychological resistance in the form of stress 40