Cross cultural variations in psychiatrists' perception of mental illness: A tool for teaching culture in psychiatry.

Cross cultural variations in psychiatrists' perception of mental illness: A tool for teaching culture in psychiatry. Asian J Psychiatr. 2016 Oct;23:1-7 Authors: Biswas J, Gangadhar BN, Keshavan M Abstract A frequent debate in psychiatry is to what extent major psychiatric diagnoses are universal versus unique across cultures. We sought to identify cultural variations between psychiatrists' diagnostic practices of mental illness in Boston Massachusetts and Bangalore, India. We surveyed psychiatrists to identify differences in how frequently symptoms appear in major mental illness in two culturally and geographically different cities. Indian psychiatrists found somatic symptoms like pain, sleep and appetite to be significantly more important in depression and violent and aggressive behavior to be significantly more common in mania than did American psychiatrists. American psychiatrists found pessimism about the future to be more significant in depression and pressured speech and marked distractibility to be more significant in mania than among Indian psychiatrists. Both groups agreed the top four symptoms of psychosis were paranoia, lack of insight, delusions and auditory hallucinations and both groups agreed that visual hallucinations and motor peculiarities to be least significant. Despite a different set of resources, both groups noted similar barriers to mental health care access. However, American psychiatrists found substance abu...
Source: Asian Journal of Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Asian J Psychiatr Source Type: research