Culture and schizophrenia

Abstract

The cross-cultural study of schizophrenia is not a new avenue of research. It was opened almost simultaneously with the early formulations of the concept of schizophrenia and developed in the spirit of a recognition of the relationship between psychopathological phenomena and the sociocultural context, exemplified by the classical studies of Durkheim. Some of the founders of modern European psychiatry visited what were then regarded as 'exotic' cultures and returned with observations which on the whole tended to strengthen their theoretical formulations which were based originally on patient populations in European institutions (for example, Kraepelin in Java, 1904; Bleuler in India, 1930). In spite of a great number of insightful and penetrating observations, the methodological aspects of the early research in schizophrenia in different cultures have been criticized for a number of reasons: observers' limited periods of contact with the foreign culture, frequent reliance on evidence that was no better than anecdotal, 'Eurocentric' assessment of the cultural background against which the features of the disorder were described, and lack of uniformity in the diagnostic criteria of schizophrenia.