A cross-cultural comparison of British and Pakistani medical students' understanding of schizophrenia (original) (raw)
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Psychiatry Research, 2007
This study is set to examine the British (in England) and Chinese (in China and Hong Kong) beliefs about the causes, behaviour manifestations and treatments of schizophrenia. It was hypothesised that first the Chinese would hold more religious and superstitious beliefs towards the causation and treatment of schizophrenia and would prefer the use of alternative medicine; second, the British would emphasise more on internal (biological and psychological) and external (sociological) beliefs for the causes and treatments. It was also predicted that the Chinese would possess more negative attitudes and beliefs about the behaviour manifestations of schizophrenia than the British. All three hypotheses were confirmed after factor analysing the internal structure of the questionnaire. The relevance between investigating beliefs of schizophrenia and treatment of psychiatric disorders for clinical practice is also highlighted.
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The International journal of social psychiatry, 2017
Lay beliefs about schizophrenia are an important factor associated with treatment-seeking behavior. This study was conducted to investigate the lay beliefs about the causes and treatments of schizophrenia in South Korea. A total of 654 adults (mean age, 35.96 ± 11.33 years) completed two questionnaires assessing their views on the causes and cures of schizophrenia. The factor structures of lay beliefs about the causes and treatments of schizophrenia were then analyzed and the correlations between the resultant factors investigated. From the cause items, four factors were extracted: Health/Lifestyle, God/Fate, Social/Environmental and Biological. Four factors were also extracted from the treatment items: Self-Help/Stress Management, Physical Treatment/Health Management, Religious Help and Mental Health Service Utilization. Notably, most participants believed that items in the Social/Environmental and Biological factors were the causes of schizophrenia, while they believed that items ...
A Cross- Cultural History of Schizophrenia
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There is accumulating epidemiological evidence of cross-ethnic differences in relation to schizophrenia’s incidence and prevalence. However, there is a dearth of information about the manifestations of cultural differences in schizophrenia’s symptoms. This thesis aims to bridge the gap in our knowledge about the relationship between cross-cultural differences and schizophrenia. Throughout this thesis, I explore the similarities and dissimilarities of the content of clinical manifestation across cultures. I also examine and further develop epidemiological and clinical issues utilizing the ecological theory model. First, I perform a qualitative systematic review which includes 26 publications. I then discuss findings from a statistical analysis of a mental health population of 860 patients in Brent, North London. Lastly, I report results from a semistructured mental health questionnaire that was devised and disseminated to 48 mental health professionals in London. Results indicate tha...
JPMA. The Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association, 2015
To assess the knowledge and practices of general practitioners about diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia and determine their association with clinical exposure to such cases in practice. The cross-sectional study was conducted in Peshawar from August 2009 to December 2011 at the clinics of general practitioners enrolled with the provincial Health Regulation Authority. All the listed GPs were contacted and those consenting to participate were included. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to assess their knowledge and practices related to diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia. They were categorised as having Good Knowledge/Practice, in this regard, when they responded to >60% of the questions correctly. Of the 135 general practitioners contacted, 114(84.5%) agreed to participate and represented the study sample. Of them, 61(53.5%) physicians did not treat any diagnosed case while 15(13.2%) treated more than 10(8.8%) annually. Only 6(5.3%) practitioners spent more than ...
Religious and ethnic group inè uences on beliefs about mental illness: A qualitative interview study
1999
An in-depth qualitative interview study is reported, with respondents (N =52; all female) from the following urban-dwelling religious groups: White Christian, Pakistani Muslim, Indian Hindu, Orthodox Jewish and Afro-Caribbean Christian. Qualitative thematic analysis of open-ended interview responses revealed that the degree to which religious coping strategies were perceived to be effective in the face of depressive and schizophrenic symptoms, varied across the groups, with prayer being perceived as particularly effective among Afro-Caribbean Christian and Pakistani Muslim groups. Across all non-white groups, and also for the Jewish group, there was fear of being misunderstood by outgroup health professionals, and among Afro-Caribbean Christian and Pakistani Muslim participants, evidence of a community stigma associated with mental illness, leading to a preference for private coping strategies. The results lend further support to recent calls for ethnic-speci c mental health service provision and highlight the utility of qualitative methodology for exploring the link between religion and lay beliefs about mental illness. It has been suggested that more needs to be known about the mental beliefs of members of different cultural and social groups in order to achieve more effective liaison and help (Ball, 1995; Mitchell, 1995; Zane, Hatanka, Park & Akatsu, 1994). In particular, little is known about the nature and effects of religiously-based beliefs about the causes and cures of mental illness, and these need to be understood and taken into account in formulating appropriate care. Religious-cultural communities also tend to foster stereotypical beliefs about health professionals such as general practitioners (GPs) and social workers (Nickerson, Helms & Terrell, 1994), and a further aim is to examine how such beliefs impact on uptake and non-uptake of services. This paper reports an interview study focusing on beliefs about mental health, its causes and cures, coping and help-seeking, and stereotypes of health professionals, in ve different cultural-religious groups in Britain. Some relevant social cognitions have been studied in the general British population 505
Beliefs About Illness of Patients with Schizophrenia
Journal of Postgraduate Medical Institute, 2015
Objective: To elicit the beliefs and perception of patients with schizophrenia about their illness by using Short Explanatory Model Interview (SEMI). Methodology: This cross sectional study was conducted in the department of psychiatry, Lady Reading Hospital. One hundred and three patients of schizophrenia were included in the study. Short explanatory model Interview (SEMI) was used to assess the explanatory model of illness of the sample. Four major areas covered in SEMI were “Concept” i.e., naming the illness, “Cause”, “Treatment Choice” i.e., help seeking behaviour, and “Severity” of the illness. Results: Mean age of the sample was 30.52 ± 9.41 years. Regarding Concept, 34(33%) patients who although couldn’t name any but attributed their condition to mental illness. The major response to the cause for the development of schizophrenia was stress of social issues by 22(23.30%) patients. A total of 56(54.3%) patients reported a combination of medication & spiritual healer to be the ...
Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 1988
This sub-study of the WHO Determinants of Outcome of Severe Mental Disorders research project was aimed at characterizing the behavioral and expressive qualities of schizophrenia in two highly diverse cultures. Early research has indicated that the core elements involving affect, perceptual and cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia are highly similar in form in most cultures of the world. Much of the cross-cultural literature emphasizes, however, strong differences in the ways in which schizophrenia is actually expressed and manifested in different settings. The basic methodology for psychiatric description and diagnosis in the WHO program was the Present State Examination. In five of the field centers a method for investigating the expressive quality and the social behavior of patients in their own communities through the eyes of significant others was applied. This method was then subjected to psychometric tests of cross-cultural applicability and found to be valid for comparing behavior across settings. The expressive patterns of the Indian and Nigerian patients were studied from two perspectives. Indian schizophrenics were described by family members as manifesting a more affective and "selfcentered" orientation; the Nigerian patients presented with a highly suspicious, bizarre, anxious quality to the basic behavioral pattern. The main features of pathology were in general accord with the descriptions of indigenous psychiatrists. The special qualities of the psychosis in the two cultures were interpreted against the background of traditional psychopathological and anthropologic theories concerning the psychodynamics and the influence of differing social conflictual themes in the two cultures. Analysis of psychopathology in this manner was found to enhance understanding of underlying mechanisms and the role of cultural conflicts in its expression.
Decoding Schizophrenia across Cultures: Clinical, Epidemiological and Aetiological Issues
There is accumulating epidemiological evidence of cross-ethnic differences in relation to schizophrenia’s incidence and prevalence. However, there is a dearth of information about the manifestations of cultural differences of schizophrenia’s symptoms. This thesis aims to bridge the gap in the knowledge on the relationship between cross-cultural differences and schizophrenia. Throughout this thesis, I explore the similarities and dissimilarities of the content of clinical manifestation across cultures. I also examine and further develop epidemiological and clinical issues. First, I perform a qualitative systematic review which includes 26 publications. This is followed by findings from a statistical analysis of a mental health population of 860 patients in Brent, North London. Lastly, I report on results from a semi-structured mental health questionnaire that was devised and disseminated to 48 mental health professionals in London. Results indicate that for ethnic groups that experie...
Cultural factors influencing content of delusions among schizophrenic patients in Saudi Arabia
2012
Schizophrenia and delusions: a review of the literature. Schizophrenia…………………………………………………………………………... 9 Schizotypal personality……………………………………………….……………….. 11 Possible socio-cultural influences on mental health in Saudi Arabia…………………. 14 Problems with the definition of delusions…………………………………………….. 16 The explanation of delusions:……………………………………………………….. 18 1-Social Attribution Explanations of delusions………………………………………. 19 2-Belief-negative and belief-positive models………………………………………… 21 3-Anomalous experiences and anxiety……………………………………………..… 22 4-Delusions as a result of depression and low self-esteem and as a defensive mechanism…………………………………………………………………………….. 24 5-Delusions as a result of trauma and childhood abuse………………………………. 27 6-Delusions as a result of a cognitive defect…………………………………………. 29 Cognitive Bias………………………………………..……………………………….. 29 Reasoning Bias (Jumping to conclusion JTC)………………………………. 31 Theory of Mind (ToM)………………………………………………………. 33 Attentional Bias……………………………………………………………… 37 Cognitive neuropsychological explanations…………………………………. 38 Neurologically-inspired theories…………………………………………… 40 The effects of content of delusions on the patient's life…………………………… 42 Chapter 2: influence of cultural context and demographic variables effects on psychotic symptoms:…………………………………………………………………. 45 iv The effects of cultural and social factors on mental illness……………………….. The effects of cultural and social factors on schizophrenia symptoms.………….. The cultural influence on content of delusions…………………………………….. Studies on variation in the content of delusions across-culture………………...… 53 Studies on content of delusions within cultures and subcultures………………… 57