Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T23:00:32.519Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

DSM–IV and culture: is the classification internationally valid?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Roland Littlewood*
Affiliation:
University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Although relatively neglected in Britain, the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has been widely adopted in both Western and non-Western countries (Spitzer, Williams & Skrodol, 1983). The descriptive and multiaxial approach used in DSM-III (1980) and in its revised edition DSM-III-R (1987), together with the introduction of specific criteria for allocating each diagnosis, would seem particularly useful when comparing psychopathologies across societies. In addition to Axes I, II and III (Clinical Syndromes, Developmental and Personality Disorders, Physical Disorders and Conditions), the Manual has two more obviously ‘social’ axes – (IV) Severity of Psychosocial Stressors and (V) Global Assessment of Functioning.

Type
Current themes
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1992

References

Bird, M. R. et al (1987) Estimates of the prevalence of childhood maladjustment in a community survey in Puerto Rico. Archives of General Psychiatry, 45, 11201126.Google Scholar
Chakraborty, A. (1990) Social Stress and Mental Health: A Social-Psychiatric Field Study of Calcutta, New Delhi: Sage.Google Scholar
Guarnaccia, P., Good, B. & Kleinman, A. (1990) A critical review of epidemiological studies of Puerto Rican mental health, American Journal of Psychiatry, 147, 11491156.Google Scholar
Honda, Y. (1983) DSM-III in Japan. In Spitzer, et al 1983.Google Scholar
Hughes, C. C. (1985) ‘Culture-bound’ or construct-bound? The syndromes and DSM-III. In The Culture-Bound Syndromes: Folk Illnesses of Psychiatric and Anthropological Interest (eds. Simons, R. C. and Hughes, C. C.). Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Jenkins, J. H. (1991) The state construction of affect: political ethos and mental health among Salvadorean refugees. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 15, 139165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kleinman, A. (1987) Anthropology and psychiatry: the role of culture in cross-cultural research on illness. British Journal of Psychiatry, 151, 447454.Google Scholar
Littlewood, R. (1990) From categories to contexts: a decade of the ‘new cross-cultural psychiatry’. British Journal of Psychiatry, 156, 308327.Google Scholar
Lock, M. (1987) DSM-III as a culture-bound construct. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, II, 3542.Google Scholar
Loring, N. & Powell, B. (1988) Gender, race and DSM-III: a study of the objectivity of psychiatric diagnostic behaviour. Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, 29, 122.Google Scholar
Prince, R. & Tcheng-Laroche, F. (1987) Culture-bound syndromes and international disease classification. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, II, 319.Google Scholar
Spitzer, R. et al (1981) DSM-III Case Book. Washington: American Psychiatric Association.Google Scholar
Spitzer, R., Williams, J. B. W. & Skrodol, A. E. (eds) (1983) International Perspectives on DSM-III. Washington: American Psychiatric Association.Google Scholar
Westermeyer, J. (1988) DSM-III psychiatric disorder among Hmong refugees in the U.S. American Journal of Psychiatry, 115, 197202.Google Scholar
Wig, N. N. (1983) DSM-III: a perspective from the Third World. In Spitzer, et al 1983.Google Scholar
Young, A. (1988) Reading DSM-III on PTSD: an anthropological account of a core text in American Psychiatry. Conference on Anthropologies of Medicine, University of Hamburg.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.