Culture and psychopharmacology

Abstract

Introduction:Culture is defined as the sum total of the way people think, feel, and act as members of a social group. Culture is learnt. Cultures can overlap and individuals can belong to several cultures. cross-cultural psychopharmacological studies have mainly focused on differences in the pharmacokinetics and pharmaco-dynamics of psychotropic medications among various ethno-cultural groups and research on many socio-cultural non-biologic contextual factors in psycho-pharmacotherapy is sporadic and often not widely known. In this paper, the authors review the relevant literature in all these areas.Methods:Searching the recent thirty years studies on cultural issues in psycho-pharmacology in a wide area and then screening them systematically, fifteen relevant studies were selected and evaluated. Results were conceptually re-arranged and re-classified and are presented in the format of a narrative review.Results and Discussion:In a general aspect, cross-cultural factors affecting psycho pharmacotherapy can be divided in two groups i.e. primary variables which directly influence pharmaco-dynamics and pharmaco-kinetics and confounding variables which indirectly interact with drug treatment, selection, usage and response. In another point of view, trans-cultural psychopharmacological issues are classified in the domains of patient variables, doctor variables and environmental variables, each including many different factors and considerations which are elaborated and discussed in the full-text of this material.