The article’s contribution to a medical humanities audience is that it explores the intersection of culture and psychiatry (Basset and Baker 2015) and examines an influential medical tool from a sociocultural perspective (Jutel 2009).
DIFFERENT CULTURAL CONTEXTS MANUAL
In addition to examining the concept of culture as such, I will also point to the ways in which the culture-related diagnostic issues in the manual depart from the manual’s categorical, symptom-based approach which pays minimal attention to context, and, by way of conclusion, I argue that the present manual runs the risk of making context an “ethnic dividing line” between those seen as culturally “other” and those who are not.
that the manual is ethnocentric and rests upon a narrow understanding of culture (e.g. The article reveals that, despite its attempt to adopt a more dynamic concept of culture, much of the critique that was raised against the Cultural Formulation of DSM-IV is still relevant for today’s version, i.e.
In this article, I scrutinize this alleged attempt at making the manual more attuned to cultural differences. In their presentation of Cultural Concepts in DSM-5, the American Psychiatric Association (2013b) points out that the fifth edition “incorporates a greater cultural sensitivity throughout the manual,” a point that was also emphasised by the Task Force when the new manual was released (Kupfer et al. This led critics to raise their voice against what they saw as a decontextualisation of mental distress and an expanding medicalization of normal sadness (Cosgrove and Wheeler 2013 Frances 2013 Wakefield 2013 Whooley 2014).Įnding up somewhat in the shadows of the questions of neurobiology and medicalization, the manual also sought to advance its validity worldwide by being applicable across ethnic and cultural divisions. Another issue that hit the news was how DSM-5 got rid of the so called “bereavement exclusion” that existed in DSM-IV and that prevented people in grief after the loss of someone close from being diagnosed with Major Depression Disorder (Zisook et al. Among the major issues at stake was what impact current developments in neurobiology would have on the structure and content of the manual.
With the aim of improving the previous manual, DSM–IV (1994), an exhaustive revision of concepts and criteria had been carried out since the beginning of the millennia.
DIFFERENT CULTURAL CONTEXTS PROFESSIONAL
In May 2013, the current version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) was published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) after more than a decade’s intense discussion both within and outside the professional community engaged in mental health diagnosing.
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