Culture-Related Issues in Assessment

Culture can be considered a contributory factor to the complex brain–mind context of health. The psychopathology of an individual is shaped significantly by the cultural environment in which it evolves. Specifically, culture has a major influence on conceptualizations of what is normal behavior and what is not, how individuals try to cope with distress and seek help as well as how mental disorders are expressed. Thus, innovative efforts have been made in the past two, three decades to introduce cultural considerations in psychiatric diagnostic systems. In this chapter, some of these culture-related developments, namely, cultural considerations for the assessment of major forms of psychopathology, cultural concepts of distress, and the Cultural Formulation, are discussed. Cultural variations in mental disorders are systematically included for each diagnostic group. These are followed by a consideration of culture in emerging innovative diagnostic systems focused not only on illness but on the whole of health.