title: Symptom Presentation and Symptom Meaning Among Traumatized Cambodian Refugees: Relevance to a Somatically Focused Cognitive-Behavior Therapy.
abstract: Among psychologically distressed Cambodian refugees, somatic complaints are particularly prominent. Cambodians interpret anxiety-related somatic sensations in terms of "Wind" (khyâl), an ethnophysiology that gives rise to multiple catastrophic interpretations; and they have prominent trauma-memory associations to anxiety-related somatic symptoms. In this article, we detail some of the common sensation-related dysphoric networks of Cambodian refugees, focusing on catastrophic cognitions and trauma associations. We argue that delineating symptom-related dysphoric networks is crucial to successfully adapt cognitive-behavioral interventions to treat panic disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder among Cambodian refugees, and that such an approach may be useful for the culturally sensitive adaptation of cognitive-behavior therapy for other traumatized non-Western groups.
authors.affiliation: Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
authors.forename: Devon E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Hinton
authors.forename: Michael W
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Otto