Somatization vs. Psychologization of Emotional Distress: A Paradigmatic Example for Cultural Psychopathology

This paper describes the developing area of cultural psychopathology, an interdisciplinary field of study focusing on the ways in which cultural factors contribute to the experience and expression of psychological distress. We begin by outlining two approaches, often competing, in order to provide a background to some of the issues that complicate the field. The main section of the paper is devoted to a discussion of depression in Chinese culture as an example of the types of questions that can be studied. Here, we start with a review of the epidemiological literature, suggesting low rates of depression in China, and move to the most commonly cited explanation, namely that Chinese individuals with depression present this distress in a physical way. Different explanations of this phenomenon, known as somatization, are explored and reconceptualized according to an increasingly important model for cross-cultural psychologists: the cultural constitution of the self. We close by discussing some of the contributions, both theoretical and methodological, that can be made by cross-cultural psychologists to researchers in cultural psychopathology

The Chinese experience of rapid modernization: Sociocultural changes, psychological consequences

Mainland China has undergone profound changes dating back to the nineteenth century, including a contemporary period of rapid modernization that began in the 1980s. The result has been dramatic social, cultural, and economic shifts impacting the daily lives of Chinese people. In this paper, we explore the psychological implications of sociocultural transformation in China, emphasizing two central themes. First, rising individualism: findings from social and developmental psychology suggest that China’s rapid development has been accompanied by ever-increasing adherence to individualistic values. Second, rising rates of depression: findings from psychiatric epidemiology point to increasing prevalence of depression over this same time period, particularly in rural settings. We argue that links between sociocultural and psychological shifts in China can be usefully studied through a cultural psychology lens, emphasizing the mutual constitution of culture, mind, and brain. In particular, we note that the link between social change, individualism, and rising mental illness deserves careful attention. Our review suggests that shifting values and socialization practices shape emotion norms of concealment and display, with implications for depressive symptom presentation. The challenge comes with interpretation. Increasing prevalence rates of depression may indeed be a general response to the rapidity of sociocultural change, or a specific consequence of rising individualism—but may also result from increasingly ‘Western’ patterns of symptom presentation, or improvements in diagnostic practice. We conclude by considering the challenges posed to standard universal models of psychological phenomena

Health and Well-being

Non peer reviewe

Cultural-clinical psychology: An introduction

Bruna Fujimoto, 49 years old, the daughter of Japanese immigrants who arrived in Brazil in the late 1950s, grew up in a small town with a sizable Japanese minority, where she worked as a receptionist. She married a Brazilian of Italian origin at age 19 in order to please her parents, who wished for her to stay close to home. However, not marrying a Japanese and never having children disappointed her parents. In her early 40s she got divorced and has moved to Rio de Janeiro five years ago, where she says she is “catching up on lost time”. Ms. Fujimoto presents symptoms of fatigue, irritability, low appetite, and social withdrawal. She attributes her symptoms to worries about securing steady employment, lack of a support network in Rio de Janeiro, and guilt about her ailing mother who’s alone after her father’s recent death. As well, she has been facing difficulties in finding a stable romantic partner, expressing concern that her age and her ethnicity (“in between Japanese and Brazilian”) is making it difficult for her to find a match. She finds that she is increasingly keeping to herself and reports mounting anxiety over the past few weeks, particularly about her way of gazing at and being with others, which has become reserved (isolated)

Teaching and Learning Guide: Towards a Cultural–Clinical Psychology

The study of culture and mental health is an interdisciplinary endeavor with a long history, but psychology has only been fitfully involved with the ongoing conversation. Cultural psychiatry, by contrast, represents a decades‐long interdisciplinary endeavor primarily involving psychiatrists and anthropologists. One problem is that the anthropological view of culture, not as independent variable but as deep context, has been unfamiliar to psychologists until relatively recently. Although anthropological views have influenced researchers in cultural psychology, at times profoundly, collaborations between cultural and clinical psychologists remain uncommon

A cross-national study of the stigmatization of severe psychiatric illness: historical review, methodological considerations and development of the questionnaire.

Despite their potential significance for public policy and health provision in different societies, popular conceptualizations of and social responses to severe psychiatric illness remain relatively unexamined. Two general research procedures may be identified: (1) the anthropological approach uses ethnographic methods to look at explicit categorizations, and (2) the sociological approach employs quantitative survey methods to examine the public 'stigma' of psychiatric illness. This article reviews methodological and conceptual approaches to the study of stigma and describes the development of an ethnographically grounded questionnaire to examine 'stigmatization' from data in different cultures. The difficulties of achieving cross-cultural comparability of meaning are discussed and the psychometric properties of the instrument are presented

Reply to: Are stressful childhood experiences relevant in non monosexual women?

We thank the commentator for his thoughtful response (Schneeberger, 2015) to our study entitled, “Explaining Mental Health Disparities for Non-monosexual Women: Abuse History and Risky Sex, or the Burdens of Non-disclosure?” (Persson et al., 2014) To summarize, Schneeberger (2015) highlights three aspects of our methodological approach: (1) how the participants were grouped; (2) how sexual orientation was evaluated; and (3) how a history of childhood abuse was assessed. We will reflect on these three issues while further considering future research directions in the study of female sexual orientation and childhood abuse

Unpacking Cultural Differences in Alexithymia: The Role of Cultural Values Among Euro-Canadian and Chinese-Canadian Students

The current study provides a cultural examination of alexithymia, a multifaceted personality construct that refers to a general deficit in the ability to identify and describe emotional states, and that has been linked to a number of psychiatric illnesses. Though this construct has been critiqued as heavily rooted in “Western” norms of emotional expression, it has not received much empirical attention from a cultural perspective. Recently, Ryder et al. (2008) found that higher levels of alexithymia among Chinese versus Euro-Canadian outpatients were explained by group differences in one component of alexithymia, externally oriented thinking (EOT); they proposed that Chinese cultural contexts may encourage EOT due to a greater emphasis on social relationships and interpersonal harmony rather than inner emotional experience. The current study examined the hypothesis that EOT is more strongly shaped by cultural values than are two other components of alexithymia, difficulty identifying feelings (DIF) and difficulty describing feelings (DDF). Euro-Canadian (n = 271) and Chinese-Canadian (n = 237) undergraduates completed measures of alexithymia and cultural values. Chinese-Canadians showed higher levels of EOT than Euro-Canadians (p < .001). EOT, and not DIF or DDF, was predicted by Modernization and Euro-American values in both groups. Furthermore, cultural values mediated the effect of group membership on levels of EOT. These results suggest that cultural differences in alexithymia may be explained by culturally based variations in the importance placed on emotions, rather than deficits in emotional processing. The study also raises questions about the measurement and meaning of EOT, particularly from a cross-cultural perspective