Maercker / Heim / Kirmayer Cultural Clinical Psychology and PTSD

2019
ISBN: 978-1-61676-497-5
Verlag: Hogrefe Publishing
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 236 Seiten

This book, written and edited by leading experts from around the world, looks critically at how culture impacts on the way posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and related disorders are diagnoseThis compact guide is packed with the latest knowledge on the assessment and treatment of persistent depressive disorder (PDD) – the new DSM-5 diagnosis that amalgamates the categories dysthymic disorder (DD), chronic major depression (MDD), and DD with major depressive episode (MDE). Written by a leading expert, the book guides us through This book, written and edited by leading experts from around the world, looks critically at how culture impacts on the way posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and related disorders are diagnosed and treated. There have been important advances in clinical treatment and research on PTSD, partly as a result of researchers and clinicians increasingly taking into account how “culture matters.”
For mental health professionals who strive to respond to the needs of people from diverse cultures who have experienced traumatic events, this book is invaluable. It presents recent research and practical approaches on key topics, including:

• How culture shapes mental health and recovery
• How to integrate culture and context into PTSD theory
• How trauma-related distress is experienced and expressed in different cultures, reflecting local values, idioms, and metaphors
• How to integrate cultural dimensions into psychological interventions
Providing new theoretical insights as well as practical advice, it will be of interest to clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, and other health professionals, as well as researchers and students engaged with mental health issues, both globally and locally.

Zielgruppe

Clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and health professionals, as well as researchers and students.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Maercker, Andreas

Heim, Eva

Kirmayer, Laurence J.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychotherapie / Klinische Psychologie Psychopathologie
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizinische Fachgebiete Psychiatrie, Sozialpsychiatrie, Suchttherapie
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychotherapie / Klinische Psychologie Beratungspsychologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Sozialpsychologie Kulturpsychologie, Ethnopsychologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Contents;6
2;Preface;8
3;Chapter 1. Culturally Responsive Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry: An Ecosocial Approach;14
4;Chapter 2. Variability of PTSD and Trauma-Related Disorders Across Cultures: A Study of Cambodians;34
5;Chapter 3. Sociosomatics in the Context of Migration;52
6;Chapter 4. Cultural Psychology Is More Than Cross-Cultural Comparisons: Toward Cultural Dimensions in Traumatic Stress Research;68
7;Chapter 5. Distress and Trauma in the Clinical History of Neurosis in Sweden and Finland;88
8;Chapter 6. Trauma and Umwelt: An Archetypal Framework for Humanitarian Interventions;102
9;Chapter 7. Wounds and Dirt: Gendered Metaphors in the Cultural History of Trauma;120
10;Chapter 8. Metaphors of Trauma in Indigenous Communities in India and Brazil;136
11;Chapter 9. Metaphors of Posttraumatic Growth: A Qualitative Study in Swiss, Lithuanian, and Brazilian Rural Communities;148
12;Chapter 10. Paradoxes and Parallels in the Global Distribution of Trauma-Related Mental Health Problems;164
13;Chapter 11. Principles and Evidence of Culture Sensitive Mental Health Approaches;178
14;Chapter 12. Culture-Sensitive Interventions in PTSD;192
15;Chapter 13. Cultural Adaptation of Scalable Interventions;212
16;Chapter 14. A Grief Intervention Embedded Within a Chinese Cultural Practice for Bereaved Parents;230
17;Contributors;244

Leseproben

4 Cultural Psychology Is More Than Cross- Cultural Comparisons Toward Cultural Dimensions in Traumatic Stress Research

Andreas Maercker

This chapter considers cultural dimensions to be a theory-guided framework within which to approach the wealth of psychological differences across diverse cultural groups. First, a few reflective statements will provide some background to the topic. This is followed by an overview of the current state of research on these dimensions in general, as well as in the area of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and prolonged grief disorder (PGD). The goal of this chapter is to encourage research which takes more of the so-called contextual factors into account when describing or analyzing posttrauma or postbereavement individuals, groups, or communities. Background: Cross-, Inter-, Trans-Cultural Psychology, or just Cultural Psychology?

Are we dealing with one unified psychology for all humans? If not, how many culturally diverse psychologies do we need to consider? In any case, how can we best describe the abundance of psychological phenomena regarding sensing, thinking, feeling, and behaving, using a coherent methodology and concept? The scope of these questions is relatively new, as psychology with all its subdisciplines faces new challenges due to globalization and the increase in worldwide migration. From a practical perspective, it relates to the psychological health of migrants and refugees. The “Western,” or “Global North” individual can no longer remain the archetypal individual to be investigated. Psychological research and application has lost its naïvety in describing assumptive human universalities and has even developed self-doubt about whether such a thing as “psychological universality” in the areas of cognition, emotion, motivation, and interpersonal or social regulation really exists. Cultural psychology – which in recent times has gained increased attention – opposes this simplified view of “universalist” statements. Rather, it suggests considering the current state of conventional psychological subdisciplines as limited, as they do not systematically incorporate cultural dimensions to capture the vast wealth of differences.

Historically, the term “cultural psychology” was developed and consolidated in the middle of the 20th century. Several cultural psychologists laid the groundwork avant la lettre: Wilhelm Wundt in his book series about cultural psychology, then called Völkerpsychologie (folk psychology) (Wundt, 1900–1920); Lev Vygotsky in the explication of cultural processes or dimensions in the developmental process (e.g., Vygotsky, 1929); and Carl G. Jung in his accounts of his worldwide journeys, as well as his texts on the archetype or the collective unknown (e.g., Jung, 1934–1954). Subsequent cultural psychology authors and schools of thought have had many other influences, particularly from Anglo-American cultural anthropology (including Boas, Mead, Benedict, and others), which played an important role following the end of colonization, subsequent to the end of World War II. Mainstream modern psychology has had its difficulties with systematically including these theories and concepts into its disciplinary research. For epistemological reasons, cultural psychology often rejects quantitative research methods in favor of argumentative conclusions. In using this methodology, it has gained important insights into indigenous psychologies, the self as emergent phenomena, and more unusual states of consciousness, such as trance and possession. However, cultural psychology’s close relative cross-cultural psychology has received more acceptance and reception in mainstream psychology due to its application of quantitative methodology. Cross-cultural psychology is marked by a pragmatic point of departure. Research data from particular samples (e.g., Europeans, European Americans) are assessed for differences from samples from other ethnic origins (e.g., Asian, Asian Americans, and so forth). If differences are found, these are subsequently interpreted. Cross-cultural psychology applies, or sometimes rather develops, its own research methodology to make the necessary comparisons by following the highest methodological standards. However, cross-cultural psychology can also be regarded as very much nontheoretical, as it restrains itself from wider speculations on the human condition. Nevertheless, both cultural psychology and cross-cultural psychology are still not widely accepted – for different reasons – in the major fields of psychology or psychological treatment. Given that there is still little co-operation between these two fields, this chapter proposes to create a discourse between them (see also Valsiner, 2007).

Cultural clinical psychology can make an important contribution by integrating theories and empirical evidence from different fields of research (i.e., clinical psychology, anthropology, sociology) to propose new theoretical frameworks concerning mental health and mental illness and its conditions across cultures. This includes both the description of clinical phenomena (i.e., symptoms) and possible explanations for these phenomena (i.e., the etiology of mental disorders), considering cultural and contextual factors besides individual dispositions or biographies (Chentsova- Dutton & Dzokoto, 2014, Kirmayer, Gómez-Carrillo, & Veissiere, 2017; Ryder et al., 2008; see also Kirmayer & Gómez-Carrillo, 2019; Chapter 1 in this volume).

As this book focuses on trauma-related disorders and particularly on PTSD, the remaining introductory statements will focus on these. Let’s take an example from a classical cultural psychological question regarding PTSD: How does individual and collective perception consolidate the consequences of trauma? This question implies further questions: Which cultural, linguistic, and/ or religious factors lead to a person labeling themselves as “I’m traumatized or I have PTSD”? – This is an entirely different approach to questioning than the traditional simplistic cross-cultural comparisons: Does the severity of PTSD main symptoms, such as re-experiences, avoidance, or sense of threat, vary in different ethnicities – for example, do Asian persons have more symptoms of avoidance?

These questions touch on the important distinction between etic and emic research approaches. These terms originate from anthropological field research and refer to the viewpoint of the observer: etic from the viewpoint of the Western scientific community (through the eyes of an outsider applying universal principles across cultures) and emic from within the cultural group (through the eyes of an insider). The emic approach generally equates to the indigenous one. The next section begins by introducing not only the “classical” PTSD, but also the newly defined prolonged grief disorder, the latter being a newcomer to the trauma- and stress-related disorder category in current psychopathology.