Research on culture-bound syndromes: new directions.
The unprecedented inclusion of culture-bound syndromes in DSM-IV provides the opportunity for highlighting the need to study such syndromes and the occasion for developing a research agenda to study them. The growing ethnic and cultural diversity of the U.S. population presents a challenge to the mental health field to develop truly cross-cultural approaches to mental health research and services. In this article, the authors provide a critique of previous analyses of the relationship between culture-bound syndromes and psychiatric diagnoses. They highlight the problems in previous classificatory exercises, which tend to focus on subsuming the culture-bound syndromes into psychiatric categories and fail to fully investigate these syndromes on their own terms. A detailed research program based on four key questions is presented both to understand culture-bound syndromes within their cultural context and to analyze the relationship between these syndromes and psychiatric disorders. Results of over a decade of research on ataques de nervios, a Latino-Caribbean cultural syndrome, are used to illustrate this research program. The four questions focus on the nature of the phenomenon, the social-cultural location of sufferers, the relationship of culture-bound syndromes to psychiatric disorders, and the social and psychiatric history of the syndrome in the life course of the sufferer.
Guarnaccia
P J
PJ
Rutgers University, NJ, USA. gortch@rci.rutgers.edu
Rogler
L H
LH
D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D018864:Cultural Diversity; D003469:Culture; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016911:Koro / Q000175:diagnosis; D008296:Malaysia; D008297:Male; D008519:Medicine, Traditional; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008875:Middle Aged; D012107:Research Design; D013577:Syndrome; D009626:Terminology as Topic; D014481:United States; D014900:West Indies