Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T15:57:13.587Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Anthropology and Psychiatry

The Role of Culture in Cross-Cultural Research on Illness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Arthur Kleinman
Arthur Kleinman*
Affiliation:
Harvard University, 330 William James Hall, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

To illustrate the contribution anthropology can make to cross-cultural and international research in psychiatry, four questions have been put to the cross-cultural research literature and discussed from an anthropological point of view: ‘To what extent do psychiatric disorders differ in different societies?’ ‘Does the tacit model of pathogenicity/pathoplasticity exaggerate the biological aspects of cross-cultural findings and blur their cultural dimensions?’ ‘What is the place of translation in cross-cultural studies?’ and ‘Does the standard format for conducting cross-cultural studies in psychiatry create a category fallacy?’ Anthropology contributes to each of these concerns an insistence that the problem of cross-cultural validity be given the same attention as the question of reliability, that the concept of culture be operationalised as a research variable, and that cultural analysis be applied to psychiatry's own taxonomies and methods rather than just to indigenous illness beliefs of native populations.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 151 , Issue 4 , October 1987 , pp. 447 - 454
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1987 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Canino, G. J., Bird, H. R., Shrout, P. E., Rubio, M., Bravo, M., Martinez, R., Sesman, M. & Guevara, L. M. (1987) The Spanish DIS: reliability and concordance with clinical diagnoses in Puerto Rico. Archives of General Psychiatry (in press).Google Scholar
Carr, J. (1978) Ethno-behaviourism and the culture-bound syndromes. The case of amok. Culture, Medicine and Society, 2, 269–293.Google ScholarPubMed
Carr, J. (1985) Depression and the culture bound syndromes. In Culture and Depression (eds A. Kleinman & B. Good). Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ebigbo, P. (1982) Development of a culture specific (Nigeria) screening scale of somatic complaints. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 6, 29–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gaviria, M., Pathak, D., Flaherty, J., Garcia-Pacheco, C., Martinez, H., Wintrob, R. & Mitchell, T. (1984) Designing and adapting instruments for a cross-cultural study on immigration and mental health in Peru. Paper presented at the American Psychiatric Association Meeting.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Good, B. (1977) The heart of what's the matter. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 1, 25–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Good, B. & Del Vecchio Good, M. J. (1986) The cultural context of diagnosis and therapy: a view from medical anthropology. In Medical Health Research and Practice in Minority Communities: Development of Culturally Sensitive Training Programs (eds M. Miranda & H. Kitano). Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office for NIMH, 1–27.Google Scholar
Guarnaccia, P. J., Dela Cancela, V. & Carrillo, E. (1987) Nervios in Puerto Ricans. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry (in press).Google Scholar
Kinzie, J. D., Manson, S. M., Vinh, D. T., Tolan, N. T., Anh, B. & Pho, T. N. (1982) Development and validation of a Vietnamese language depression rating scale. American Journal of Psychiatry, 139, 1276–1281.Google ScholarPubMed
Kleinman, A. (1977) Culture, depression and the ‘new’ crosscultural psychiatry. Social Science and Medicine, 11, 3–11.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kleinman, A. (1985) Some uses and abuses of social science in medicine. In Metatheory in Social Science (eds D. Fiske & R. Shweder). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kleinman, A. (1986) Social Origins of Distress and Disease: Depression, Neurasthenia and Pain in Modem China. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kleinman, A. & Good, B. (1985) Culture and depression. In Culture and Depression (eds A. Kleinman & B. Good). Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewontin, R. C. et al (1984) Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and Human Nature. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Low, S. (1985) Nervios in Costa Rica. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
McHugh, P. & Slavney, A. (1986) The Perspectives of Psychiatry. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Manson, S. M., Shore, J. H. & Bloom, J. D. (1985) The depressive experience in American Indian communities: a challenge for psychiatric theory and diagnosis. In Culture and Depression (eds A. Kleinman & B. Good). Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Marsella, A. J., Sartorius, N., Jablensky, A. & Fenton, F. R. (1985) Cross-cultural studies of depression. In Culture and Depression (eds A. Kleinman & B. Good). Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Mayr, E. (1982) The Growth of Biological Thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Obeyesexere, G. (1985) Depression, Buddhism and the work of culture. In Culture and Depression (eds A. Kleinman & B. Good). Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rubel, A., O'Nell, C. W. & Collado-Ardon, R. (1984) Susto. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sartorius, N., Jablensky, A., Korten, A., Ernberg, G., Anker, M., Cooper, J. E. & Day, R. (1986) Early manifestations and first contact incidence of schizophrenia in different cultures. Psychological Medicine, 16, 909–928.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shweder, R. (1985) Cross-cultural study of emotions. In Culture, and Depression (eds A. Kleinman & B. Good). Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Stone, D. (1984) The Disabled State. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
World Health Organization (1973) International Pilot Study oj Schizophrenia. Geneva: WHO.Google Scholar
World Health Organization (1979) Schizophrenia: An International Follow-up Study. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Yelin, E., Nevitt, M. & Epstein, W. (1980) Toward an epidemiology of work disability. Milbank Memorial Foundation Quarterly, 58, 386–414.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.