Although clinicians are encouraged to be more sensitive to cultural factors in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders, as evidenced by the significant changes in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 1994), little information is provided to help them determine which aspects of culture are important to the mental health of ...

In general, psychotic symptomatology falls within the major categories of mental disorders such as schizophrenia, affective disorder and organic mental disorder. Those that do not fit the proposed diagnostic criteria for the aforementioned disorders are usually classified under the DSM-IH diagnosis of atypical psychosis. In the eastern culture, such symptoms are accepted as part of the cultural...

To explore factors that influence the behavior of Chinese students and strategies for interventions, this paper presents a cross-cultural study on Chinese and American students. It examines the relationships between students’ behaviors and the cultural influences; implications for special educators who work with minority students with emotional/behavioral disorders (E/BD) will also be discussed.

OBJECTIVES To generate the Persian version of the Perceived Socio-cultural Pressure Scale. METHODS The study, done in Kerman, Iran, from November 2010 to February 2011, comprised 1200 volunteers. After translation and back-translation, the questionnaire's internal consistency, criterion and construct validity were evaluated, individual and global scores of the Perceived Socio-cultural Pressur...

BACKGROUND Since the sixties of the last century, many people from Morocco and Turkey have migrated into the Netherlands. In the last decade, Moroccan and Turkish patients have found their way to organizations for mental health care. However, they often drop out of treatment. Problems in the communication with therapists and different expectations regarding treatment seem to be causal factors f...

Why the study of culture and its clinical application is important in mental health training and service? Mental health and illness is a set of subjective experience and a social process and thus involves a practice of culture-congruent care. Series of anthropological, sociological and cross-cultural research has clearly demonstrated a very strong ground in favour of this contention. An individ...

There are pitfalls in the singular application of western categories in diagnosing psychiatric disorders and distress among refugees. Based on my research with Cambodian refugees I argue that cultural bereavement, by mapping the subjective experience of refugees, gives meaning to the refugee's distress, clarifies the 'structure' of the person's reactions to loss, frames psychiatric disorder in ...

Even as forensic psychiatrists have increasingly contemplated the role of culture in forensic psychiatry, practical cultural evaluations remain an under-theorized area with scant research. Older conceptions of cultural competence may risk stereotyping the evaluee on the basis of perceived group characteristics. This article offers a revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Di...