Culture and Psychotherapy

This keynote speech presents the latest findings on the role of culture and its implications for psychotherapy. In view of culture-bound syndromes, cultural psychology posits that the experience of mental illness may be embedded within cultural contexts and thus they may vary across cultures. The treatment of the culture-bound syndromes would also vary.Some clinical syndromes including Koro in South and East Asia, Malgri in Various Australian aboriginal groups, Agonias among Portugese and Azoreans, Amok in South East Asia, Hikikomori in Japan, Dhat in South Asia, Brain fag syndrome in West Africa and China, Ataques de nervios in Puerto Rica, Frogophobia in China, Latab in South Asia, Siberia, and Japan and Voodo death in Africa demonstrate how culture-bound disorders need to be examined on the strength of their culturally derived meanings. The talk indicates how culture plays a significant role in the development of psychopathologies. By virtue of a recondite analysis of social anxiety disorders and major depressive disorder (MDD)in accordance with DSM-V, the presentation indicates how somatization and psychologization are significantly influenced by cultural factors beyond the DSM context. This purports that symptoms are experienced differently across cultures. The keynote presents the root analysis of some of these cultural differences and their implications in diagnosis, prescription and analysis of psychopathologies and argues how cultural competencies would facilitate the process of understanding culture bound syndromes in our culturally constructed world. While explicating some recent examples from case studies in a number of cultures, the talk will elucidate the role of mindfulness in implementing therapeutic interventions with different cultures.