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Psychiatric Diagnosis in a Transcultural Setting: The Importance of Lexical Categories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Rodney Morice
Rodney Morice*
Affiliation:
The Flinders University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia
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Summary

In a transcultural setting, psychiatric diagnosis is often impeded by language and cultural barriers. A greater reliance on observed or reported behaviour than on the self-reporting of subjective discomfort may thus be expected, and this could result in the low prevalence of reported anxiety and depression in many transcultural psychiatric surveys. The language of the Pintupi Aborigines of Central Australia, until recently palaeolithic hunter-gatherers, is seen to contain lexical categories for anxiety and depression. This attests not only to their capacity to experience such affects, but also to their ability to express them verbally. The implications of this finding for psychiatric diagnosis are discussed.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 132 , Issue 1 , January 1978 , pp. 87 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1978 

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