Title: Culture and Mental Health (CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY) iResearchNet
Headings: Culture and Mental Health
Culture and Mental Health
The Growing Popularity of Culture and Mental Health
Critical Concepts and Issues
Ethnocentrism
Cultural Construction of Reality
Key Questions in the Study of Culture and Psychopathology
Some Critical Issues and Research Findings
Biology and Culture in Psychopathology
Concepts of Illness and Disease
Equivalence in Clinical Assessment
Epidemiology
Research Strategies for Studying Culture and Symptomatology Relationships
Ethnocultural Parameters of Psychopathology
Depressive Disorders
Schizophrenia
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Cultures as Causative of Psychiatric Disorders
1. Stress.
2. Normality and Abnormality.
3. Coping and Resources.
References:

Content: These questions have increased the popularity of culture and psychopathology as a subdisciplinary specialty. Critical Concepts and Issues
Ethnocentrism and the cultural construction of reality are key issues. Ethnocentrism
The fundamental assumption underlying the study of culture and psychopathology is ethnocentrism and cultural bias. The term ethnocentrism refers to the “natural tendency or inclination” among people everywhere to view reality from their own cultural experience and perspective. In the course of doing so, the traditions, behaviors, and practices of people from other cultures are often considered inferior, strange, abnormal, and/or deviant. Obviously, when a decision must be made regarding a person’s sanity and treatment, ethnocentrism can have destructive consequences. Most of our basic conceptual, methodological, and professional assumptions and practices regarding mental health are derived and validated within the historical and cultural contexts of northern European and North American societies. As such, they are ethnocentric and culturally biased. They are rooted within ideological worldviews that favor individualistic, materialistic, democratic, and scientific perspectives. As a result, the essential concepts of personhood, normality and abnormality, illness and health, consciousness, and personal choice and responsibility that guide Western psychological and psychiatric thought and practice bear little relevance and/or applicability to people from non- Western cultures and traditions.