Cultures as a Causative of Mental Disorder

Abstract

A review of previous papers makes it evident that mental disorder is considered to be the product of multiple factors. The present paper is in harmony with this orientation, and its title, which was assigned to us, should not be interpreted as implying ideas of mono-causal relationship. The discussion of our topic will be necessarily limited and selective, since talking about culture in its global sense touches on virtually all aspects of human behavior. Some areas such as family relationships and social change have been discussed earlier. Others such as cultural history and philosophy are too vast to be treated adequately in one chapter. We shall attempt, therefore, to present some points from salient literature, and to give impressions derived from several years of research dealing with socio-cultural factors and mental disorder.