Culture-Bound Syndromes During Pregnancy and Early Childhood

Abstract

Culture-bound syndromes or conditions are a universal occurrence. Individuals or families embrace a diagnostic category and an explanation of certain physical and mental ailments by assigning their causality to specific phenomena of a natural, mystical, or religious nature. Sometimes they are attributed to the feelings in others, or negative wishes or states of mind. Culture-bound syndromes may also occur in the highly industrialized Western world as those strongly determined by cultural representations and parental beliefs, like some dysmorphic disorders, anorexia nervosa or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and others. Rooted in sociocultural norms and restrictions to the expression of one’s internal states (especially those deemed unacceptable), these syndromes are culturally rational and acceptable explanations for their expression within a social context. Such etiological attributions also lead to a culturally acceptable solution. This chapter provides multiple examples of culture-bound syndromes in pregnancy and early childhood with the corollary that many of the culture-bound syndromes (across cultures) are psychosomatic in nature, with clinical manifestations throughout the body.