Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- Part I Theoretical background
- Part II Culture and mental health
- 8 Culture and psychopathology: general view
- 9 Developmental aspects of cultural psychiatry
- 10 Explanatory models in psychiatry
- 11 Culture-bound syndromes: a re-evaluation
- 12 Psychiatric epidemiology and its contributions to cultural psychiatry
- 13 Acculturation and identity
- 14 Cultural consonance
- Part III Culture and mental disorders
- Part IV Theoretical aspects of management
- Part V Management with special groups
- Part VI Cultural research and training
- Cultural psychiatry: the past and the future
- Index
- References
14 - Cultural consonance
from Part II - Culture and mental health
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 August 2009
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- Part I Theoretical background
- Part II Culture and mental health
- 8 Culture and psychopathology: general view
- 9 Developmental aspects of cultural psychiatry
- 10 Explanatory models in psychiatry
- 11 Culture-bound syndromes: a re-evaluation
- 12 Psychiatric epidemiology and its contributions to cultural psychiatry
- 13 Acculturation and identity
- 14 Cultural consonance
- Part III Culture and mental disorders
- Part IV Theoretical aspects of management
- Part V Management with special groups
- Part VI Cultural research and training
- Cultural psychiatry: the past and the future
- Index
- References
Summary
EDITORS' INTRODUCTION
The definitions of culture make it in some ways easy to understand but at the same time the inherent ambiguity in the definition makes it difficult to be used readily as a variable in research. Quite often language is confused with the ethnic group, ethnic groups are conflicted with racial identity and cultures get replaced with nation states in research studies and data analysis. The definitions of culture must include some dimensions which are easy to measure and their impact on mental illness easily gauged. Historically in epidemiological studies one group of individuals is compared with another group of individuals in a way that both groups are seen as homogenous and individual differences are ignored. Cultures influence physical illnesses as much as they do mental illnesses although the mediating factors may be different. The role of individual and the cultural characteristics have to be part of the assessment.
In this chapter, Dressler provides a theory of cultural consonance which links collective representations that make up the culture of a group with the practices of individuals who enact these representations. He argues that efforts to define more precisely the role of culture in processes of both physical and mental illnesses coincided with the development of the concept of psychosocial distress. Dressler suggests that the study of collective meanings and the relationship of culture to the individual are fundamental in culture theory. His concept of cultural consonance begins with the assumption that culture is both learned and shared and that the locus of culture is within individual beings and in the aggregate social groups made of human beings.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Textbook of Cultural Psychiatry , pp. 179 - 190Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
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