scholarly journals Culture‑Bound Syndromes and Cultural Concepts of Distress in Psychiatry

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 118-126
Author(s):  
Tomás Teodoro ◽  
Pedro Afonso

Culture‑bound syndromes (CBS) and cultural concepts of distress include syndromes or disease manifestations whose occurrence is related to particular cultural contexts. The term CBS is controversial, because ultimately all psychiatric and medical conditions are associated with culture. They constitute different points of view on mental health based on alternative explanatory models of mental distress. These idioms of distress have experienced a growing interest in Western countries either by an increase in the number of cases or the influence that transcultural psychiatry has come to conquer. This review describes clinical, epidemiological and contextual characteristics of most commonly reported CBS and briefly discusses the relationship between culture and psychiatric disorders. Modern societies are increasingly multi‑ethnic and multicultural and thus, discussion of these concepts remains relevant, aiming to integrate CBS in current classification systems or establishing criteria that best define them as legitimate nosological entities.

Author(s):  
Maria C. Prom ◽  
Alexander C. Tsai

This chapter offers an introduction to and discussion of the basic principles, concepts, and challenges of global psychiatric epidemiology, including the classification of mental illness, cultural concepts of distress, and the current understanding of global epidemiology and its limitations. The authors discuss how practitioners can use this information to improve their awareness of how their personal backgrounds and professional training impact their classification, understanding, and treatment of mental illness, and how they can take actions toward improving their cultural competence and ultimately improving patient relationships and care management. This discussion focuses primarily on the challenge of understanding global epidemiology through the lens of biomedical diagnostic classification systems, and on the importance of understanding how culture and society affect our knowledge of and approach to the diagnosis and treatment of illness.


Author(s):  
David Semple ◽  
Roger Smyth

This chapter covers transcultural psychiatry and culture-bound disorders. It covers culturally influenced variants of universal broad categories of mental disorder, to enable meaningful diagnostic formulation and development of appropriate treatment plans. Summarizing the recent developments in global mental health, it puts cultural context to the presentation of psychiatric disorders, and examples of common cultural concepts of distress are defined.


1981 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Morgenbrod ◽  
E. Serifi

I. SOUNDS IN MODERN HEBREW Hebrew shorashim – the triliteral roots – have already been analysed from many points of view, for example in Morgenbrod & Serifi (1976, 1977, 1978). The aim of this article is an examination of the sound structure of shorashim.In general we can divide the consonants which form the shorashim into two different types; concerning (a) the manner of articulation (e.g. plosives, nasals, etc.); and (b) the place of articulation (e.g. bilabials, labiodentals, etc.).In this study we have concentrated on position of articulation and ignore manner of articulation.In Figure I the consonants forming the shorashim are related to the different kinds of sounds according to Wendt (1961).In order to investigate the relationship between the sounds it is convenient to establish so-called compound matrices with a computer. All computation was done by a program in COBOL running on the SIEMENS System 4004. As material for our analysis we took 2443 shorashim from the sources Barkaly (1972) and Even-Shoshan (1972).


2010 ◽  
pp. 92-112
Author(s):  
Franco Prina

The socio-legal perspective on the alcohol legislation, including the norms concerned with the relationship between individuals and alcoholic drinks, helps answering some essentials questions: what was/is the "social construction" of the alcohol problem in different eras and different cultures and, consequently, which objectives are deemed to be worthy of pursuit through the creation or amendment of legislation? Which social actors have the ability, in a given period of time, to inscribe the relevance of innovative alcohol legislation on the political agenda and what kind of dialectic is used among those who champion points of view, competences and above all, different interests? Which interests and values would appear to meet with legislatory protection time after time? What tools, of the ample range available, are chosen to achieve the aims set out? To what extent is legislation implemented (or not implemented), and why? Which aspects of the implementation process prove to be most significant, i.e. define the actual content of the legislation "in force", and are therefore tangibly experienced by the law's end target? How much of an impact does legislation have on behavior which is subject to regulation or on problems which stem from such behavior?


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey B. Hodgin ◽  
Laura H. Mariani ◽  
Jarcy Zee ◽  
Q Liu ◽  
Abigail R. Smith ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTThe current classification system for focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) and minimal change disease (MCD) does not fully capture the complex structural changes in kidney biopsies, nor the clinical and molecular heterogeneity of these diseases. The Nephrotic Syndrome Study Network (NEPTUNE) Digital Pathology Scoring System (NDPSS) was applied to 221 NEPTUNE FSGS/MCD digital kidney biopsies for glomerular scoring using 37 descriptors. The descriptor-based glomerular profiles were used to cluster patients with similar morphologic characteristics. Glomerular descriptors and patient clusters were assessed for association with time to proteinuria remission and disease progression by using adjusted Cox models, and eGFR measures over time by using linear mixed models. Messenger RNA from glomerular tissue was used to assess differentially expressed genes (DEG) between clusters and identify genes associated with individual descriptors driving cluster membership. Three clusters were identified: X (N=56), Y (N=68), and Z (N=97). Clusters Y and Z had higher probabilities of proteinuria remission (HR [95% CI]= 1.95 [0.99, 3.85] and 3.29 [1.52, 7.13], respectively), lower hazards of disease progression 0.22 [0.08, 0.57] and 0.11 [0.03, 0.45], respectively), and greater loss of eGFR over time compared with X. Cluster X had 1920 DEGs compared to Y+Z, which reflected activation of pathways of immune response and inflammation. Six individual descriptors driving the clusters individually correlated with clinical outcomes and gene expression. The NDPSS allows for characterization of FSGS/MCD patients into clinically and biologically relevant categories and uncovers histologic parameters associated with clinical outcomes and molecular signatures not included in current classification systems.TRANSLATIONAL STATEMENTFSGS and MCD are heterogeneous diseases that manifest with a variety of structural changes often not captured by conventional classification systems. This study shows that a detailed morphologic analysis and quantification of these changes allows for better representation of the structural abnormalities within each patient and for grouping patients with similar morphologic profiles into categories that are clinically and biologically relevant.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-27
Author(s):  
Monica Manolachi

Censorship as a literary subject has sometimes been necessary in times of change, as it may show how the flaws in power relations influence, sometimes very dramatically, the access to and the production of knowledge. The Woman in the Photo: a Diary, 1987-1989 by Tia Șerbănescu and A Censor’s Notebook by Liliana Corobca are two books that deal with the issue of censorship in the 1980s (the former) and the 1970s (the latter). Both writers tackle the problem from inside the ruling system, aiming at authenticity in different ways. On the one hand, instead of writing a novel, Tia Șerbănescu kept a diary in which she contemplated the oppression and the corruption of the time and their consequences on the freedom of thought, of expression and of speech. She thoroughly described what she felt and thought about her relatives, friends and other people she met, about books and their authors, in a time when keeping a diary was hard and often perilous. On the other hand, using the technique of the mise en abyme, Liliana Corobca begins from a fictitious exchange of emails to eventually enter and explore the mind of a censor and reveal what she thought and felt about the system, her co-workers, her boss, the books she proofread, their authors and her own identity. Detailed examinations and performances of the relationship between writing and censorship, the two novels provide engaging, often tragi-comical, insights into the psychological process of producing literary texts. The intention of this article is to compare and contrast the two author’s perspectives on the act of writing and some of its functions from four points of view: literary, cultural, social and political.


Author(s):  
فؤاد بوعلي

أثارت الكتابة الإبداعية باللغات الأجنبية العديد من المواقف المتعارضة في الحقلين: الأكاديمي، والثقافي. فقد عرف تاريخ المغرب الحديث سجالاً قوياً بخصوص هوية الكتابات الإبداعية باللغات الأجنبية، بين مَن يرى فيها استلاباً ثقافياً، ومَن يرفض ربط الجنسية الأدبية بالانتماء اللغوي، بل وربطها بالمتخيّل الجماعي أكثر من أيّ شيء آخر، ثمّ بالمنتوج الأدبي بوصفه تجسيداً لهذا المتخيّل. فالتعبير عن الذات بلغة أجنبية يطرح للنقاش مفاهيم، مثل: الهوية الثقافية، والسلطة، والخصوصية، والعلاقة بالآخر. وباستخدام القراءة التراتبية التي ظهرت في الدراسات بعد الكولونيالية أمكننا إثبات التلازم بين استعمال اللغة الفرنسية في الإبداع ومسار الفرنكفونية بوصفها إيديولوجيا استعماريةً تفرض لغتها على الشعوب والفضاءات الذيلية. The debate over literary writing in a foreign language has instigated a lot of dichotomous points of view in Moroccan academic and cultural circles. History of modern Morocco has witnessed strong ongoing debates about the identity of creative writings in foreign language. There are those who would consider such writings as cultural alienation. Contrary to that, there are those who refuse to link literary text to language belonging, and link it instead to the collective imaginary and to the literary product as a manifestation of this imaginary. In fact, expressing the self by using a foreign language puts into question notions such as cultural identity, authority, nation-building, and otherness. By applying the theory of hierarchical reading which appeared in the post colonial studies, we have established the relationship between using French in creative writings and La Francophonie as a colonial ideology imposed on people and annexed spaces.


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