Culture, medicine and psychiatry
April 17, 2026
Chizara Lock, Anna Lavis, Rosina Pendrous et al.
Women recovering from a first episode of psychosis face multiple barriers that intersect with sex and gender norms. A qualitative analysis of 31 interviews with women recruited from Early Intervention Services in England identified five key barriers: internal conflicts with identity, constrained moral agency, inadequate support for past trauma, structural factors, and stigma. These barriers are shaped by both sex and gender expectations. Addressing them within mental health services is essential to help women find new meaning and move forward after psychosis. The findings highlight the need for sex- and gender-specific interventions and clinical practices that consider past experiences and normative gender roles.
Culture, medicine and psychiatry
February 9, 2026
Manon Arminot, Lara Haghiri Ghazvini, Thierry Baubet et al.
Possession states present a complex challenge in transcultural psychiatry. When a Somali patient experiencing possession was treated in a transcultural consultation group, young clinicians witnessed a trance and experienced cultural countertransference. Using the Cultural Formulation Interview, the clinicians' countertransference evolved, leading to a deeper understanding of the symptom and improvement in the patient's condition. This case demonstrates the importance of addressing cultural countertransference among young clinicians in transcultural consultations.
Culture, medicine and psychiatry
June 10, 2025
Tawni L Tidwell
Since 2013, the Tukdam Project has studied Buddhist practitioners in India who enter a Tibetan Buddhist post-death meditative state called tukdam, in which the body shows slowed decomposition and an altered postmortem timeline. An international team—including Buddhist monastics, Tibetan medical physicians, biomedical researchers, and neuroscientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and India's NIMHANS—has investigated the phenomenon across disciplines and cultures. Despite differing paradigms, the teams have used instruments, physiological markers, definitions of consciousness, and ontological and epistemological frameworks from both Euroamerican biomedicine and Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and medicine.
Culture, medicine and psychiatry
March 1, 2025
Angelo Miramonti
Amina, a Senegalese woman, is possessed by lineage spirits and must navigate two conflicting interpretations of her experience: the traditional Lebou view of persecution by spirits and a Western psychopathological diagnosis. She rejects the healers her tradition imposes, instead choosing a priest who respects her need to control her own healing. By strategically working within the traditional belief system rather than abandoning it, she uses possession to renegotiate her role and status within her group. This allows her to expand her agency and affirm her identity as a permanently liminal person, one who inhabits and redraws boundaries between different worlds of meaning.
Culture, medicine and psychiatry
December 1, 2014
Ram P Sapkota, Dristy Gurung, Deepa Neupane et al.
Spirit possession in a Nepali village is a multidimensional phenomenon that cannot be reduced to a psychiatric diagnosis. A mixed-method study compared women who had experienced possession with those who had not: possessed women reported higher rates of traumatic events and more symptoms of anxiety (68% vs. 18%), depression (41% vs. 19%), and PTSD (27% vs. 0%). However, qualitative interviews with possessed individuals, family members, and traditional healers showed they did not view possession as mental illness; instead, it was seen as a form of communication with spirits and an idiom of distress expressing suffering related to mental illness, violence, trauma, and oppression. Clinical efforts must consider socio-cultural context to avoid harm.
Culture, medicine and psychiatry
September 1, 1987
R Littlewood, M Lipsedge
Cultural explanations of psychopathology in the West have rarely used models from anthropology developed for small-scale non-literate communities. Some features of ritual patterns classed as 'culture-bound syndromes' apply to Western neurosis. These reactions articulate both personal predicaments and public concerns, often reflecting core structural oppositions between age groups or sexes. Their power comes from relying on unquestionable assumptions that, while beyond everyday jural relationships, articulate those relationships. In Western reactions, biomedicine provides this 'mystical sanction'. Theoretical paradigms emphasize either individual pragmatic or expressive aspects, or social homeostasis.