ABSTRACT
This chapter examines medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) in individuals from non-mainstream populations, and the emphasis will be on reviewing the extant literature. It addresses the examination of individuals who are recent immigrants to the United States and speak no English, or individuals who have not learned English in spite of having lived in the United States for decades, in forensic and clinical neuropsychological contexts. The chapter focuses on non-English speakers with low levels of education because MUS in middle-class non-English-speaking individuals with average or higher levels of education are not thought to be measurably different from those of English speakers, at least in the neuropsychological context. Most of the research on mental illness and MUS in non-English speakers comes from primary medical care, medical anthropology, and cultural psychiatry. The literature suggests that MUS occur frequently in all the cultures that have been investigated, with negative psychosocial factors generally leading to greater levels of somatization.
