Culture-bound Syndromes

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Culture-bound syndromes are psychiatric illnesses which seem to occur only in a particular culture and no other. Variously termed "atypical, culture-bound psychoses," "culture-bound reactive syndromes" and "ethnic psychoses," these disorders have been of immense interest to ethnopsychiatric research. Culture-bound syndromes are part of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV, but can also be considered as disease entities in their own right, rather than subsumed under psychiatric categories (Hughes & Wintrob, 1995). Each ethnic group has its own classification system of diseases. Although each ethnic group may recognize diarrhea or fevers, for example, the categories for classifying them vary from group to group and do not necessarily correspond with one another. These entities are ailments with coherent concepts of etiologies, athophysiologies, and treatments, but they may also be expressions of mental or social distress that have social and symbolic meanings (Bhugra, & Jacob, 1997).

Traditionally the most widely discussed culture-bound syndromes include latah, amok, pibloktoq, nervios, and susto. Other culture-bound syndromes include tristitia, fatigué and triste tout le temps, hwa-byung, indisposition, colerina, taijin kyofusho, ode ori, malgri, grisi-siknis, spasmophilie, pena, saladera, falling-out, brain fag syndrome, and fright illness. The following are descriptions of the five more widely ...