Culture and Psychopathology; Mental Health in a Cross-Cultural Perspective
Postgraduate course
- ECTS credits
- 3
- Teaching semesters
- Spring
- Course code
- PSYK302G
- Number of semesters
- 1
- Teaching language
- English
- Resources
- Schedule
- Reading list
Course description
Objectives and Content
Like all systems of healing, biomedicine is a cultural product arising from Western industrialized countries. Yet practice of medicine to a large extent has shown very little cognizance to cultural and social factors. Biomedical conception of health and its practice are often transported from one part of the world to the other in packages of absolute truths. Notwithstanding great results, they have sometimes proven to be ineffective and even detrimental to the receiving group of people. Central to this problem is failure on the part of biomedicine to take into account culture's influence on people's attitudes, belief systems, conception of illness and disease, disease aetiology, and health-care seeking behavior. In addition, while certain health problems (e.g. culture-bound syndromes) are difficult to understand using imported biomedical models from the West, they are readily understood within the cultural societies where they are manifested. The crux of this course is to examine mental illness, their manifestations, diagnosis, and treatment in different cultural societies. The following areas of topics will be addressed during the 5-days of lectures.
- Culture and mental illness: Concepts, issues, models and theories
- Classification/grouping of mental disorders in diagnostic manuals: culture and methodolog
- Review of some common mental illness (anxiety, mood, somatoform disorders and schizophrenia from a cultural perspective
- Culture bound syndromes, cultural validations and their possible links with mental illness in the classification manuals
- Acculturation, multiculturalism and mental health
- Cross-cultural and multicultural psychotherapy: Help-seeking behavior, treatment and prognosis
Learning Outcomes
Knowledge
At the end of the module the student should be able to:
- Understand how culture bound syndromes arise
- Understand the link between migration and (maI-)adaptation
- Indigenous healers and healing
Skills
- Describe and determine the cultural variations in the expression, course and outcome of psychopathology
- Identify and describe the role of cultural variables in the aetiology of mental disorder
Competence
- Be aware how your cultural background may impact on mental illness
- Understand differences in symptoms expression across cultures
- Appraise cultural variations in standards of normality and abnormality
ECTS Credits
Level of Study
Semester of Instruction
Place of Instruction
Required Previous Knowledge
Recommended Previous Knowledge
Credit Reduction due to Course Overlap
Access to the Course
Teaching and learning methods
Teaching Methods and Extent of Organized Teaching
The course will involve formal lectures, interactive group discussions. Otherwise, the students will do a lot of reading and self-reflection on mental disorders from their own society, as well as discuss anThe course will involve formal lectures, interactive group discussions. Otherwise, the students will do a lot of reading and self-reflection on mental disorders from their own society, as well as discuss and interview people from other cultures how mental disorders are defined, identified and treated in their particular society.
At the end of each day's lecture, students will be given a home work. Each home work will involve about 3 -5 hours of work (reading) and the submission of a written essay of about 500 words. Ideally, the essay should be submitted by noon of the following day. All the essays should have been submitted by the last day of lectures. During the 2nd week of the course, students will be expected to do self-study. This self-study will result in a self defined reading objective where the student has to write an annotated summary of 5 articles. This would be 2500 words.
Number of weeks: 2 weeks (1 week face-to-face contact): 1 week self study.
Compulsory Assignments and Attendance
The students will work in groups of up to 4 students in a group where they will undertake an interview assignment. A report on what the group has done will be submitted about one week after the last day of lectures.
To be allowed to take part in the final exam, a student must be part of a group submitting a work report from the interview.
This will be graded as "Pass/Fail"
Forms of Assessment
Oral examination with the possibility of using support materials.
Oral exams will be scheduled for about ONE WEEK after the mandatory activity report has been submitted.
The exams will be graded A-F
The oral exams will not last more than thirty (30) minutes per candidate.
The exams will be scheduled during ordinary working hours (from 08.00 - 16.00 - Norwegian time).