Chapter 11

Question 1

What are the debates in mental health relating to culture?

Answer 1

If mental disorders are universal conditions or locally (culture and context) specific

Question 2

What would disorders being universal implicate?

Answer 2

Biological causes

Question 3

What would disorders being culturally specific implicate?

Answer 3

mental disorders are ways of describing or understanding ‘abnormal’ or undesirable behaviours in specific cultural contexts

Question 4

What are the key elements of culture?

Answer 4

1. social and shared
2. beliefs, values, practises transmitted from one to another
3. we all participate in culture
4. fluid and ever changing

*Disparities in power

Question 5

How does power impact culture? and how does it impact mental illness?

Answer 5

• disparities in power
• some groups and viewpoints have more dominance
• impact on how we understand mental illness

Question 6

How does culture impact mental health?

Answer 6

1. culture can be a social determinant
2. can be a protective factor (ex: some black women = tendency to avoid self blame = shield)
3. Help determine how we understand and respond to the experience of psychological distress
4. How we respond to these types of thoughts and feelings
5. Expression of mental distress

Question 7

How is culture a social determinant?

Answer 7

• When behaviour and personality don’t fit well with culture, more likely to be deemed as having a disorder
• experiencing racism and discrimination = risk factors
• ethnic minorities = higher chance experiencing and diagnosed

Question 8

How does culture impact our response to mental distress?

Answer 8

• what we perceive as unusual or problematic
• whether we think consulting a medical professional
• beliefs of mental distress = products of cultural context

Question 9

What is somatization?

Answer 9

experiencing psychological symptoms through bodily pain/discomfort - may be more common in cultures where outward expression of emotionality and pain is discouraged

• mental illness is a way of performing mental distress in a way understandable to other members of cultural group?

Question 10

What is category fallacy?

Answer 10

• the reification of one culture’s diagnostic categories and their application to people in another culture, where these categories lack coherence and their validity had not be established

Question 11

Why are singular/universal systems ineffective?

Answer 11

Conceptualization of mental distress depends on cultural context

Question 12

What is transcultural psychiatry?

Answer 12

anthropology + psychiatry to incorporate cultural understandings of illness into clinical practise

Question 13

What is ethnocentrism?

Answer 13

Tendency to imagine one’s own culture as correct

Question 14

What are critiques of psychiatry and its view of culture

Answer 14

• generalizations of non white cultural groups
• not meaningfully considered culture
• treats culture as an afterthought
  ** psychiatry is a set of cultural beliefs

Question 15

What are critiques of western psychiatry?

Answer 15

• form of imperialism
• displaces local understandings of suffering
• dismisses other perspectives

Question 16

Critiques of culture bound syndromes

Answer 16

• pathologizing/exoticizing non western expressions of mental distress
• implying DSM diagnostic categories exist independently of culture
• now called cultural syndromes, cultural idioms of distress, and cultural explanations or perceived cases. culture related diagnostic issues

Question 17

What are cultural syndromes

Answer 17

co-occuring symptoms or abnormal behaviours in a specific (non-western) cultural group - similar to culture bound syndrome

Question 18

What are cultural idioms of distress

Answer 18

ways of talking about suffering within a given cultural group without involving specific symptoms or syndromes

Question 19

What are cultural explanations or perceived causes?

Answer 19

Describe causal reasons for a person’s psychological distress and abnormal behaviour that are culturally bound or specific

Question 20

What are culture related diagnostic issues

Answer 20

• list cultural factors that might affect how clinicians form a diagnosis

Question 21

What are the three key approaches characterizing the debate on whether mental illness is universal or culturally specific?

Answer 21

Absolutist, Universalist, Relativist

Question 22

What is Absolutist and evidence

Answer 22

• mental disorders as being globally shared phenomena
• psychotic phenomena seem to be known by virtually all cultures around the world

Question 23

What is Universalist and evidence?

Answer 23

• Mental illness globally consistent even if the content is heavily shaped by culture
• cultural conditions play role in shaping experience of mental illness (content of psychosis)

Question 24

What is Relativist and evidence?

Answer 24

• perceptions of distress unique to each culture and diagnosis = culturally bound
• whether psychotic phenomena are signs of illness depends on social context

Question 25

What is global mental health

Answer 25

• movement aims to improve equity in mental health treatment globally
• mental health treatment = human right
• mental illness = major contributor to global burden of disease and disability
• provide access to treatment in low income countries

Question 26

What are critiques of global mental health?

Answer 26

• ignores foundation of problems
• psychiatric imperialism
• displaces local ideas of suffering, abnormal behaviour, and response treatment

Question 27

What are some good things aboutInternational trauma interventions?

Answer 27

• considered effective long term investments
• prevent PTSD from early intervention
• prevent future violence and conflict