ABSTRACT
In Chapter 2, Helman sets out the role of anthropology in mental health care, and draws some attention to culture-bound syndromes as part of the history of cultural understanding of mental distress. This chapter, however, explores some specific phenomena in order to ensure that researchers and practitioners who encounter such diagnoses and associated symptoms are prepared to challenge such concepts, and to ensure there is critical application of these diagnoses. It could be argued that, like the working steam train, culture-bound syndromes are becoming confined to fewer and fewer parts of the world, largely swept aside by the diesel locomotive of globalization and DSM-IV, and consigned to museums where they are lovingly tended by a small group of enthusiasts. Others see things differently. Guarnaccia and Rogler (1999) applauded the inclusion of culture-bound syndromes in DSMIV as an overdue acknowledgement of both the cultural diversity of many modern societies, as well as acknowledging the global reach of DSM-IV. The way was now open, they suggested, to investigate these syndromes within their cultural context and to analyse the relationship between these syndromes
and psychiatric disorders. A third view is that the very concept of a culture-bound syndrome is a tautology because there can be no such thing as a culture-free syndrome – all disease classifications have to exist in a cultural context (Lee, 1996). And that it is only by becoming aware of the cultural context of all consultations and research, by becoming reflexive, that we can truly practise cultural psychiatry.
