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Factsheet

Culture-bound illness

This factsheet summarises what a culture-bound syndrome is, arguments for and against culture-bound syndromes and implications for the diagnosis and classification systems of mental illness.

1. What is a culture-bound syndrome?

A culture-bound syndrome (CBS) is a mental illness which is unique to a specific culture. An example of a CBS is a disorder which is locally known as Amok. Amok occurs specifically in south-east Asia. A person experiencing Amok begins by brooding and then breaks out into aggressive attacks against random victims. This outburst is followed by sleep and amnesia (this is where the term ‘to run amok’ comes from). Amok is accepted as a mental illness in south-east Asia, but is unfamiliar in other countries, including Britain. Equally, anorexia nervosa can be considered a CBS as it is primarily found in Western cultures.

Hill (2001) states that a CBS has a pattern of symptoms which:

  • is almost exclusive to a specific location or population;
  • is regarded locally as an illness and has a local name; and
  • does not fit easily into disorders listed in the DSM or ICD systems.

2. Do culture-bound syndromes really exist?

The main debate about culture-bound syndromes is: are they just variations of universal disorders or are they really unique to specific cultures?

To follow this debate, you need to understand these terms:
1. Cultural universality = when a behaviour is not affected by culture and is the same in all cultures. Kendall and Hammen (1995) list some culturally universal mental disorders, including schizophrenia and dementia.
2. Cultural relativism = when a disorder is unique to a particular culture (it is called ‘culturally relative’).

It may be that CBSs are just variations of universal disorders. That is, a universal disorder is just being expressed differently in different cultures. The culturally relative symptoms are determined by the values, norms and lifestyles of that culture. For example, it may be that the mental disorder known as Dhat (see text box 1) is really the universal disorder of depression, with the Dhat symptoms being the local expression of depression (Mumford, 1996).

Exam hint: You should be able to briefly describe some culture-bound syndromes, such as Koro and Dhat. However, you must make sure that you can also talk about them in terms of whether they are really culture-bound or not.

Arguments for the existence of culture-bound syndromes
Pfeiffer (1982) argues that some disorders are culture-bound because:

  • The pattern of symptoms seen in one culture does not match disorders of other cultures…

This extract is from Albon, A. (2007) Culture-bound mental illness. Curriculum Press Ltd.:Wellington, UK. ISSN: 1351-5136. This extract is reproduced with the kind permission of Curriculum Press Ltd.