Cultural syndromes: what they are, and several examples

Although most mental or psychopathological disorders occur with almost the same fire in anywhere in the world, there are certain mental disorders that only occur in one society or culture concrete. They are called cultural syndromes..

Also known as cultural mental disorders, they are characterized by being psychopathological pictures that occur specifically in members of a culture, but which can become so common in certain places that where they appear they become considered the most common alterations.

• Related article: "The 18 types of mental illness"

What are cultural syndromes?

Cultural syndromes are mental disorders or psychosomatic that affect only a specific community, society or culture. These syndromes are recorded as diseases, although sometimes there is no organic pathology in patients.

Although there may be similarities with other pathologies or experiences, syndromes or disorders cultural values ​​are not observed in other societies or cultural nuclei external to where it was discovered and located.

Likewise, the very term “cultural syndrome” has been much debated among the scientific community, and much of it censors it and resists using it, since they are categorized by the very culture.

Cultural syndromes put the differences between cultures at the center of attention. Differences that are specified above all in the different aspects of spiritual, mental or physical perceptions and experiences. For example, a conduct or behavior that in another culture is experienced as abnormal or pathological in Western culture can be perfectly integrated into what is considered "normal".

Currently, the most important diagnostic manual, the DSM-5, refers to cultural syndromes under the general category of "cultural concepts of stress".

• You may be interested: "What is Cultural Psychology?"

How to identify a cultural syndrome?

There are certain distinctive characteristics of cultural syndromes that make it possible to differentiate them. These features are:

• The syndrome is defined and determined as a condition by the culture itself.
• that same culture is aware of the symptoms and knows the treatment.
• It is a syndrome unknown in other cultures.
• An organic origin for this syndrome has not been found.

Within the symptomatology associated with these syndromes can be found both somatic symptoms, such as pain; or symptoms related to behavioral disturbances. Likewise, although some of these syndromes share a basic symptomatology, different elements related to culture can always be found that can distinguish them.

Finally, it must be taken into account that many times the limits of what is considered a culture are fuzzy, although it is usually possible to territorially delimit its scope between populations human.

Examples of cultural syndromes

Although there is a long record of cultural syndromes, all of them categorized according to the region of the world they belong to, this article describes a series of cultural syndromes that stand out for being peculiar or striking.

1. Hwa-byung syndrome (Korea)

The Hwa-byung, also known as Hwa-byeong, is a Korean somatization disorder. This mental alteration appears in people who are unable to face or control their anger in situations they perceive as unfair.

The term is can be translated as a compound word formed by "fire" or "anger" and "disease". Also, if the geographical area is further restricted, in South Korea it is more well known as "depression or anger disease".

The epidemiology of this disorder is of an incidence of 35% in the working population.

2. Sangue asleep (Cape Verde, Africa)

This alteration is culturally related to the islanders who inhabit Cape Verde, in Africa. this disorder includes suffering from a wide range of neurological ailments, including blindness, seizures, numbness, pain, paralysis, stroke, and tremors. It can also be responsible for acute myocardial infarction, miscarriage, and infection.

The original term belongs to the Portuguese language and literally translates as “sleeping blood”.

3. Sickness of the spirits (Indoamerica)

This disorder typical of Native American tribes is characterized by the fact that the person manifests a wide variety of somatic and psychological symptoms associated with excessive, and in occasions, obsessive preoccupation with issues related to death.

In this phenomenon, the importance of suggestion and psychological rumination can be sensed, phenomena that feed off each other and have to do with a alteration in the management of the attentional focus and the management of anxiety that, in addition, is influenced by what is observed in the behavior of the the rest.

4. Koro (Chinese and Malaysian)

Koro disease is a disorder that mainly affects men, who experience a state of panic, with anxious tendencies, during which this notice that your penis decreases in size or it is receding, as if it could disappear.

Despite the fact that in a syndrome typical of the male sex, cases have been registered in women, who perceived said shrinkage in their breasts and genitals.

Since states of anxiety can affect the volume and circumference of the penis, this panic is fed back, reaching behaviors such as holding or fixing the penis with some type of instrument.

Most cases of Koro occur in men, during the stage of adolescence and youth, who suffer from a sexual, paranoid or depressive disorder.

5. Scare or fright syndrome (Latin America)

A rather unusual or unique syndrome typical of Latin American culture is that of susto or fright. At the person who is the victim of a fright or fright experiences a series of symptoms associates that make the mere fact of scaring someone the cause of an illness.

A wide variety of symptoms associated with susto syndrome have been described, some of them are:

• loss of appetite
• Muscular weakness
• Lack of energy
• Pallor
• vomiting and diarrhea
• Fever
• Unrest
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Fever

Cases have been recorded of people affected by this disease to the point of causing death.

6. Arctic Hysteria or Piblokto (Populations of the North Pole)

This type of hysteria was recorded in populations originating from the North Pole, such as the Eskimos of Siberia, Canada, Greenland or Alaska.

This type of disorder can be divided into two different syndromes:

1. A syndrome typical of the Siberian region whose main characteristic is that the person suffers from strong imitative mania.
2. A state in which the person undergoes a frantic dissociation.

In either of the two varieties, the person returns to their normal state once the crisis is over.

7. Morgellons syndrome (Western Society)

In Morgellons syndrome, the person is invaded by a delirium according to which believes to be infected by infectious elements or capable of transmitting a diseasesuch as insects and parasites.

People who suffer from this disorder manifest a series of skin lesions due to obsession with scratching and biting the skin, since according to the patient he feels a constant tingling in her.

Bibliographic references:

• American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. American Psychiatric Association.
• Bures, F. (2016). The Geography of Madness: Penis Thieves, Voodoo Death, and the Search for the Meaning of the World's Strangest Syndromes Hardcover. New York: Melville House.
• Guarnaccia, P. J. & Roger, L.H. (1999) Research on Culture-Bound Syndromes: New Directions. American Journal of Psychiatry 156: p. 1322 - 1327
• Jilek W.G. (2001) Psychiatric Disorders: Culture-specific. International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier Science Ltd.