Are mental illnesses such as PMS and depression culturally determined? | Corrinne Burns | Science | guardian.co.uk

Are mental illnesses such as PMS and depression culturally determined? | Corrinne Burns | Science | guardian.co.uk

•  Culture-bound syndromes are most often the preoccupation of anthropologists. Typically, the patient displays symptoms that are recognised as indicating a particular illness only by other members of that patient's cultural group. The dhat syndrome observed in parts of India, characterised by fatigue, anxiety and guilt and usually experienced by men, is a well-documented example of a psychological culture-bound syndrome, as is the susto, or fright sickness, of Latin America.
• In a recent editorial in the British Journal of General Practice, Professor Christopher Dowrick ...points out that there is no discrete genetic variation known to cause depression. Rather, there is genetic overlap across a range of mental illness, including depressive disorder, autism and schizophrenia.
• Prof Dowrick's point is that as China and India become politically dominant, spreading different concepts of what constitutes mental illness, we will have to be more sceptical of our cherished diagnostic categories. "In western anglophone societies we have developed an ethic of happiness, in which aberrations ? are assumed to indicate illness," he writes
• ? For sure, no one is arguing than they are not genuine illnesses ? to the patient, the symptoms are real and painful. I used to be convinced by the biomedical model of depression, but now I'm not so sure. Could depression, and other familiar mental conditions, be interpreted as a kind of local language ? our culturally established way of expressing distress and asking for help?