Depression in cultural context: "Chinese somatization," revisited

Abstract

We have presented a view of culture and mental health that builds on work in cultural psychiatry, anthropology, and cultural psychology, and applied it to research on culture and depression. In particular, we have returned to the well-known topic of Chinese somatization. A culture–mind–brain approach to these questions helps us think about them in a way that points toward new research. We have applied this approach to thinking about a single set of questions, relevant to a single (DSM-based) diagnosis, in a single cultural group. The potential, however, is to rethink how we conceptualize mental health in ways consistent with cultural psychiatry’s general perspective over the past several decades, while incorporating rather than rejecting the many recent advances in brain and behavior sciences. In so doing, we gain a more expanded and nuanced view of the global landscape of mental health, accompanied by a more expanded and nuanced view of individual patients.