ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the interface between culture, health systems and health services research, with particular reference to mental health. Culture may broadly be defined as social structures, systems, ideas and assumptions, which together form human societies. These influential social structures include nuclear and extended families, kinship networks, community and neighbourhood. Factors that nurture social capital and social networks are embedded in cultures and generate cultures. Other factors found within cultures include leadership patterns, professional status of health care professionals, and social stratifying systems such as religion, caste and class. In every culture there are prevalent and popular ideas, and assumptions that reflect expectations of how and why things should be done. For example, cultures include attitudes about the meaning and significance of life, and prescribe rules of behaviour for different groups of people within a society. Culture
also determines which behaviours or rituals are confined to or cross the public and private realms or the religious and secular realms.
