The authors demonstrate the significance of adding the cultural
dimension to basic psychiatric concepts. They point out the areas in which
the work of anthropology and social psychology are relevant to psychiatry,
including understanding mental health and illness, child- rearing practices
and their effects on personality, cognition, family and social networks,
sex roles and behavior, alcohol use, communication, and therapy. They also
present some of the major conceptual foundations of cultural psychiatry,
which include ethnography, emic and etic approaches, the cross-cultural
approach, and the study of subjective culture.
Abstract Teaser