ABSTRACT
Over the past several decades, researchers have increasingly examined cultural influences in psychopathology. However, for much of this period, the study of culture and mental disorders was a marginal field of inquiry. As we demonstrate in this chapter, cultural issues have moved to the fore in the study of psychopathology. A landmark event marking this transition came in 1977 when Kleinman heralded the beginning of a “new cross-cultural psychiatry” an interdisciplinary research approach integrating anthropological methods and conceptualizations with traditional psychiatric and psychological approaches. Mental health researchers were encouraged to respect indigenous illness categories and to recognize the limitations of traditional illness categories, such as depression and schizophrenia. Also, the new crosscultural psychiatry distinguished between disease, a “malfunctioning or maladaptation of biological or psychological processes,” and illness, “the personal, interpersonal, and cultural reaction to disease” (p. 9). The perspective that Kleinman and others (Fabrega, 1975; Kleinman, Eisenberg, & Good, 1978) articulated in the seventies reflected an important direction for the study of culture and psychopathology-to understand the social world within mental illness. (See also Draguns, 1980, and Marsella, 1980).
