Affective disorders in cultural context

This article reviews epidemiologic and ethnographic evidence for the cultural shaping of the causes, symptomatology, and course of affective disorders. Cross-cultural research demonstrates much overlap of depression with anxiety, somatoform, and dissociative disorders, raising questions about the universality of the prototypical representation of depression in North American psychiatry. Culture-specific symptoms may lead to under-recognition or misidentification of syndromes of mania and depression in many ethnocultural groups. Cultural idioms of distress may employ symptoms related to affective disorders to express sentiments and perceptions that do not in themselves indicate psychopathology. Socially mediated cognition about the self and specific modes of interpersonal interaction influence the course of depression. This article discusses some implications of these findings for the recognition and treatment of affective disorders among culturally diverse populations in primary care and mental health care settings.