Discuss how culture affects the prevalence and presentation of psychological disorders.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Students' answers may vary.

Culture dramatically influences the types of psychological abnormality one observes as well as the way psychological abnormality is expressed. Among all the major adult disorders included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, categorization a minority are found across all cultures of the world. Most others are prevalent primarily in North America and Western Europe.

For instance, take anorexia nervosa, the disorder in which people become obsessed with their weight and sometimes stop eating, ultimately starving to death in the process. This disorder occurs most frequently in cultures that hold the societal standard that slender female bodies are the most desirable.

In most of the world, where such a standard does not exist, anorexia nervosa is rare. Furthermore, the disorder may appear in specific ways in a particular culture. For instance, in Hong Kong, symptoms of one form of anorexia relate to complaints of bloated stomachs, rather than fears of becoming fat.

Similarly, dissociative identity (multiple personality) disorder makes sense as a problem only in societies in which a sense of self is fairly concrete. In India, the self is based more on external factors that are relatively independent of the person. There, when an individual displays symptoms of what people in a Western society would call dissociative identity disorder, Indians assume that that person is possessed either by demons (which they view as a malady) or by gods (which does not require treatment).