Transcultural Psychiatry
April 1, 2017
Maurice Eisenbruch
32 citations
This paper reports an ethnographic study of mass fainting among garment factory workers in Cambodia. Research was undertaken in 2010-2015 in 48 factories in Phnom Penh and 8 provinces. Data were collected in Khmer using nonprobability sampling. In participant observation with monks, factory managers, health workers, and affected women, cultural understandings were explored. One or more episodes...
Transcultural Psychiatry
October 1, 2016
Ayesha Ahmad, Simon Dein
2 citations
Multicultural societies such as the United Kingdom are host to people with diverse belief systems and behavioral norms. Whilst a country requires that all members of society conform to standardized legal requirements, cases arise that involve certain complexities related to the cultural or religious context in which a certain action was committed. This paper addresses the impact of culture on...
Transcultural Psychiatry
April 1, 2016
Khashayar Beigi
2 citations
While Russia has historically and geographically close ties with Islam, the second most-practiced religion in its vast territories, the collapse of the USSR changed the terms of this relationship in significant ways. One key shift is the emergence of new immigration patterns between Russia and former Soviet states. Traversing distant lands from the peripheries of the Caucasus and Central Asia...
Transcultural Psychiatry
December 1, 2015
Jan Dirk Blom, Igmar T Poulina, Trevor L Van Gellecum et al.
Brua is an Afro-Caribbean religion and healing tradition from the southern part of the former Netherlands Antilles. Like other Caribbean healing traditions, it plays a significant role in shaping how individuals experience and express disorders which Western health professionals consider to require psychiatric care. Because little has been published on Brua, and because patients from Aruba,...
Transcultural Psychiatry
August 1, 2015
Laurence J. Kirmayer
188 citations
Mindfulness meditation and other techniques drawn from Buddhism have increasingly been integrated into forms of psychotherapeutic intervention. In much of this work, mindfulness is understood as a mode of awareness that is present-centered and nonevaluative. This form of awareness is assumed to have intrinsic value in promoting positive mental health and adaptation by interrupting discursive...
Transcultural Psychiatry
August 1, 2015
Chikako Ozawa-de Silva
Mindfulness in the Buddhist tradition involves a variety of practices, and contemporary secular forms of mindfulness practices, therapies, and interventions can similarly be broadened to include more of these forms. The Japanese practice of Naikan takes one mindfulness practice from the Buddhist tradition--that of recollecting the kindness of others--and asks clients to engage in this practice...
Transcultural Psychiatry
October 1, 2013
Ria Reis
37 citations
This article examines children's enactment of spirit possession idioms and witchcraft in Africa including the meanings such idioms provide and the local healing resources they mobilize. Idioms of haunting spirits in Northern Uganda and witch-children elsewhere in Africa can be interpreted as manifestations of social crises and mass traumatic stress. On the other hand, such idioms also allow...
Transcultural Psychiatry
September 1, 2010
Simon Dein
30 citations
This article examines the relationship between Judeo-Christian religious experience and psychopathology. It builds on William James's Varieties of Religious Experience and more specifically his discussions of self, agency and the subliminal. Contemporary research on Christian conversion, mysticism, and its relationship to psychosis and mental health and healing are discussed. Future themes for...
Transcultural Psychiatry
July 1, 2010
Mary V. Seeman
5 citations
This paper reflects the intersection of three cultures: the rave (all night dance party and use of the drug, Ecstasy) culture; the ward culture of an inpatient psychiatric program for First Episode Psychosis; the spirit healing culture of the Philippines. All three intersected in Toronto, Canada in the mid 1990s, as illustrated by the clinical case of a 19-year-old university student who was...
Transcultural Psychiatry
March 1, 2008
John Belanti, Mahendra Perera, Karuppiah Jagadheesan
64 citations
Near-death experiences (NDEs) include a set of subjective experiences encountered by people who were close to death or were faced with life-threatening situations. Reports have suggested that the phenomenology of NDE might differ across cultures. This article is aimed at providing an updated phenomenological perspective by comparing NDEs in a cross-cultural context. We compared the various...
Transcultural Psychiatry
December 1, 2006
Goffredo Bartocci, Giovanni Giacomo Rovera, Nicola Lalli et al.
The study of the relationship between psychiatry and religion has become an issue of increasing importance for both research and clinical practice. This article presents the history of the R. M. Bucke Memorial Society for the Study of Religious Experience, established by Raymond Prince in Montréal in 1964 as one of the first scientific societies whose aim was to investigate those...
Transcultural Psychiatry
June 1, 2005
Marjolein Van Duijl, Etzel Cardeña, Joop De Jong
62 citations
There is little systematic research on the cross-cultural validity of the dissociative disorders, especially in non-western countries. This study evaluates the fit of the DSM-IV classification and concepts of these disorders with local concepts, experiences and local presentations in south-west Uganda. We conducted focus group discussions with medical students, traditional healers, religious...
Transcultural Psychiatry
March 1, 2005
Joop De Jong
Sleep paralysis is one of the lesser-known and more benign forms of parasomnias. The primary or idiopathic form, also called isolated sleep paralysis, is illustrated by showing how patients from different cultures weave the phenomenology of sleep paralysis into their clinical narratives. Clinical case examples are presented of patients from Guinea Bissau, the Netherlands, Morocco, and Surinam...
Transcultural Psychiatry
March 1, 2005
Richard J McNally, Susan A Clancy
Sleep paralysis accompanied by hypnopompic ('upon awakening') hallucinations is an often-frightening manifestation of discordance between the cognitive/perceptual and motor aspects of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Awakening sleepers become aware of an inability to move, and sometimes experience intrusion of dream mentation into waking consciousness (e.g. seeing intruders in the bedroom). In...
Transcultural Psychiatry
March 1, 2005
David J. Hufford
This article presents an overview of the sleep paralysis experience from both a cultural and a historical perspective. The robust, complex phenomenological pattern that represents the subjective experience of sleep paralysis is documented and illustrated. Examples are given showing that, for a majority of subjects, sleep paralysis is taken to be a kind of spiritual experience. This is, in part,...
Transcultural Psychiatry
March 1, 2005
Cheryl M. Paradis, Steven A. Friedman
Studies have reported a wide range in lifetime prevalence of sleep paralysis (SP). This variation may stem from cultural factors, stressful life events and genetic differences in studied populations. We found that recurrent SP was more common among African-American participants, especially those with panic disorder. Recurrent SP was reported by 59% of African Americans with panic disorder, 7%...
Transcultural Psychiatry
December 1, 2000
Eli Somer, Meir Saadon
50 citations
This study investigated Stambali, a Tunisian trance-dance practiced in Israel as a healing and a demon exorcism ritual by Jewish-Tunisian immigrants. The authors observed the ritual and conducted semi-structured ethnographic interviews with key informants. Content analysis revealed that Stambali is practiced for prophylactic reasons (e.g. repelling the ‘evil eye’), for the promotion of personal...