8. North America

Abstract

Much interest has been shown of late in the psychiatric problems of members of American subcultures. The materials to be presented in this section are concerned with American Indians, Mexican-Americans, Japanese-Americans, and Chinese-Americans. J. H. SHORE et al. conducted a psychiatric epidemi ological study in a small Indian fishing village in the State of Washington. They conclude that poverty and cultural change combine to produce the increased psychiatric morbidity in this village. A parallel study carried out by this group led to the establishment of a community mental health consul tation program in the same village. P. E. TERMANSEN, a psychiatrist, and J. RYAN, an anthropologist, conducted a mental and physical health survey of British Columbia Indians and non-Indian controls. Their study was three- pronged : it included a survey of general practitioners, a study of hospital admissions (charts and interviews), and a community survey of an urban Salish Indian reserve. R. JESSOR and his multidisciplinary team, composed of two psychologists, an anthropologist, and a sociologist, attempted to establish a theory of deviant behavior through a sociopsychological methodology applied to expressions of alcohol abuse in three U.S. cultures (Anglo-American, Spanish-American, and American Indian). D. H. STOKER et al. compared Anglo-American and Mexican-American female patients undergoing psycho therapy and describes differences noted between the two groups. R. B. EDGERTON et al. explored the relative importance of folk psychotherapy— curanderismo—among Mexican-Americans in East Los Angeles. They found that curanderismo in East Los Angeles has lost its traditional, dramatic, cere monial quality and that nowadays few Mexican-Americans turn to curanderos for help. The next paper of this section deals with Japanese-Americans. G. M. MATSUMOTO et al. compared the magnitude of ethnic identification among three generations of Japanese-Americans in Honolulu, Hawaii, with a previous similar study carried out in Seattle, Washington. Their tool of in vestigation was the Ethnic Identity Questionnaire. Finally P. G. BOURNE, as part of a broader psychiatric study of the Chinese in San Francisco, reports on suicide among them.