Protective elements in traditional cultures

Abstract

Among the environmental factors which have to be taken into account by psychiatric epidemiologists, when trying to interpret differences in the prevalence of neurotic and psychosomatic symptoms in different populations, the influence of social support systems is frequently invoked. For example, the pioneer community surveys carried out by Alex Leighton and his co-workers in Nova Scotia and in Nigeria showed that groups of people living in areas which exhibited features of social disintegration presented significant increases in the prevalence rates for such symptoms. Leighton also showed that in town-dwelling Nigerians, contrary to the findings in most other surveys, men showed higher rates of symptoms than women. He argued that in situations of rapid economic, occupational and social change the men of this population experienced more radical changes in their life-style than did the women, and attributed the women's lower rates to the assurance given to them by the continuance of their important domestic and child-rearing roles. In many other surveys, in Taiwan, Ethiopia and India it has been shown that symptom rates are higher, for both men and women, among those who have recently moved from rural to urban surroundings. This finding recalls Durkheim's observation of the loss of solidarite , and development of anomie among French villagers who moved into the industrial towns of France, a hundred years ago. A more specific illustrate of the consequence of losing an important elemetn in a long-established social support system was provided by the findings of a symptom-prevalence survey carried out among villagers in a rural area of South India by Dr. R.L. Kaput and myself. We were particularly interested to observe that two of the communities which we surveyed were in the process of ‘changing over’ from a system of matrilineal inheritance and family residence to a patrilineal one. Data will be presented to show that symptom rates were significantly lower among women who adhered to the old pattern than among those who had changed over. The implications of this finding will be discussed.