Running head: PSYCHIATRIC DIAGNOSIS ACROSS CULTURES 1

Psychiatric Diagnosis Across Cultures

Prisha Samir Surti

Student Id: 110052890, PSYC-1160

University of Windsor
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INTRODUCTION

Among the various factors that shape Psychiatric Diagnosis, one is culture. There are different

ways different disorders are diagnosed because of the different culture variants that birth them.

For example, as discussed in (Lilienfeld et al., 2018), when it comes to social anxiety in Japan it

is explained as the fear of offending others through offensive speech or actions or even behavior

like exhibiting a terrible body odor (Kleinknecht et al., 1994; Vriends et al., 2013) but in the

Western Culture considering United States, social anxiety is explained as the fear of public

embarrassment. Such differences among perceptions of mental disorders and how they request to

be diagnosed, a cultural-bound syndrome comes about, just like observing the fact that Japanese

tend to be more worried about the influence and effect of their behavior on others than are

Westerners.

It has been established that Psychiatric Diagnosis are indeed not universal but they vary across

cultures as they should, considering the different characteristics of people and the impact their

culture has on them including their mental illnesses. The question that would be undergoing

investigation in this research paper is - if the Autism Spectrum Disorder a culture-bound

syndrome and to what extent it differs in various societies along with how that specific culture

perceives the disorder.

Autism Spectrum Disorder also known as the Asperger’s disorder is the one wherein individual

experience deficits at communicating with other people and overall social bonding, impaired

imagination sometimes accompanied by intellectual impairment as well. Some of the symptoms

include repetitive speech and restrictive behaviors or avoiding change (Lilenfeld et al., 2018).

The disorder can sometimes be detected at 18 months or younger and by the age of 2 could be

diagnosed by a professional and be considered very real and reliable.

REVIEW LITERATURE

The very first study explores the multicultural facets involved with the Autism Spectrum Disorder

where the aim to provide fewer answers but raise even better questions for further examination.

(Dychus TT et al., 2004)

They managed to find a prevalent rate of Autism across races but failed to find enough

information on how families with such cases adapt to raising their affected kids. The prevalence

of research for the same within multicultural groups showed results indicating very low

incidence of the disorder among developing countries like India, Kenya and Hungary. (Sanua,

1981a,1981b, 1984). The researcher associated with this study discovered that the western,

technologically intensive culture had far more incidences of Autism where the nuclear families

were more prominent than these other developing countries where extended families were

predominant. Due to advances in the fields on neurology and genetics, these findings were

clearly subject to change. Therefore, to avoid largely generalized results, they suggest a way

investigation for the same that would not contradict the validity “is to conduct a comprehensive

epidemiological study. Although not as precise as biological studies (e.g., studying differences

in neurostructural, neurochemistry, physiognomy), epidemiological surveys provide a big picture

of the reported incidence or prevalence of autism in a given community.”

The current status of the link of races and Autism is still conflicting, researchers are studying the

first-degree immigrant families who have recently moved to a new country. Most of these

epidemiological surveys indicate a higher prevalence of Autism among immigrant kids compared

to non-immigrant kids (Gillberg et al., 1987).

This article informs me about my research question in areas how a particular set of results are

subject to change and what should be the area for further venture to obtain more precise results.
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This further examines the Cross-Cultural Comparison of Sensory Behaviors in Children with

Autism. (Kristina G. Caron et al., 2012)

Parents of kids with syndrome oftentimes report that their children exhibit uncommon responses

to sensory experiences and very little analysis is offered, describing however parents’ and

children’s culture and surroundings may influence parents’ reports of their children’s behaviors.

This study compared the frequency of parent-reported responses to sensory experiences in

youngsters from 2 countries—Israel and the United States. Therefore, was investigated to

administer the Short Sensory Profile to primary caregivers of kids with syndrome spectrum

disorders (ASD) and generally developing peers. Results indicate that Israeli folks rumored

uncommon responses to sensory experiences less oftentimes than U.S. folks for each ASD and

generally developing youngsters. U.S. youngsters with ASD incontestable considerably bigger

issue within the sense modality Filtering and Visual/Auditory Sensitivity domains than Israeli

youngsters with ASD. These findings indicate a requirement to explore the influence of culture

and surroundings on any caregiver perceptions of the responses to sensory experiences of kids

with ASD. Sensory processing is subject to environmental influences and it has been established

that kids with Autism Spectrum process sensory information differently than others. Members in

both ASD tests exhibited more strange reactions to tangible encounters than the ordinarily

creating correlation gatherings (Kristina G. Caron et al., 2012). This finding is steady with the

writing (Gal et al., 2007) and adds additional proof that kids with ASD have essentially more

strange reactions to tangible encounters. Specifically, noteworthy, Israeli parental figure reports

appraised the kids with ASD as having better hear-able separating and less issues with

visual/hear-able affectability than did U.S. guardian reports. This discovery warrants further

examination to decide if it is identified with social contrasts affecting the guardians' reports (i.e.,
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do Israeli parental figures have an alternate social norm for hear-able separating and visual/hear-

able affectability than U.S. parental figures?) or to real populace contrasts (do youngsters from

various geographic zones or various societies show contrasts in tactile execution?).

This study helps the question that is undergoing investigation here explaining that symptoms

across cultures could be expected to very alike but no study supports that information. The

research was aimed at examining the different sensory responses among two cultures, they put

this into action by comparing individuals of the same age, typically developing children with

children with Autism Spectrum.

This following study now examines how Autism Spectrum differs in cultures where income is

low and middle. (Lydia A. Stewart et al., 2017) It is remotely even tough to imagine the relation

output or income of a country must have on psychiatric diagnosis of a mental disorder but a well-

articulated review was conducted by the author mentioned above for the same. It was stated that

“18 different autism spectrum disorder screeners have been used in low- and middle-income

settings with wide ranges of sensitivities and specificities.” The critical variety in investigation

configuration, screening philosophy, and populace attributes restricts the capacity of this audit to

make vigorous proposals about ideal screening instrument choice. Clinical-based evaluating for

Austism Spectrum was the most broadly detailed technique. In any case, local area-based

screening was demonstrated to be a powerful technique for recognizing Autism Spectrum range

issue in networks with restricted clinical assets. A couple of studies remembered for this survey

revealed social transformation of screening instruments and joint effort with nearby partners.

Building up rules for the detailing of social variation and local area cooperation systems just as

screening instrument psychometrics and screening philosophy will empower the field to grow
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best practices for mental imbalance range problem separating low-asset settings. (Lydia A.

Stewart et al., 2017)

SUMMARY

Collectively all the sources explain and answer the question under investigation in complete

clarity; exhibiting that Autism Spectrum is very much a culture-bound syndrome. Different

cultures perceive it different and adapt to it differently. The environment amongst the research

has been the main criteria of influence that has been shaping the disorder rather than genetics

because it’s a no-brainer that they have an influence. Likewise, it is discussed above that Western

cultures who are so capital intensive in their lifestyles have predominant nuclear families than

other who have extended. Those nuclear families were experiencing more affected kids with

Autism than were other which were more of the developing cultures. The fact that children had

varied sensory responses among cultures when compared to other children their age also showed

that the nature part of the debate does have a significant influence on the psychiatric diagnosis of

a particular disorder.

The entire subject matter still has quite enough discovering to encounter because of which I

cannot help but notice gaps wherein future ventures can take place. The researches have been

pretty generalized and focusing on only to 2-3 cultures at once and they have only been

examining the current residents of a culture. Every country has immigrants and putting them

under the microscope would be more helpful since then one could easily make out the impact

environment has and how Autism becomes a culture bound syndrome. Examining those who

themselves have experienced Autism and have kids could be researched, who nevertheless also

are immigrants, could be an even better option.

PROPOSING AN EXPERIMENT

As it is known, the causes for Autism Spectrum Disorders remain mysterious. The prominent fact

that it is genetic has been taken into consideration along with unidentified environmental cause

which could account for some increase in the problem. During the extensive research, I could not

help but stumble upon the argument of vaccines having some role to play in the increment of the

disorder. There has been no concrete evidence that it’s true which is why I would like to

investigate the matter by proposing an experiment that involves cultural variation. All kinds of

cultures have all kinds of vaccines for their citizens and it is no surprise that a few just hit a miss

at times. They make conditions worse or give rise to new conditions. All societies are bound to

try vaccines produced by their own people first and that might also be the reason why certain

cultures suffer from certain disorders a little more than other cultures. An experiment where new

people who consume the vaccines that have rumors of making Autism worse or initiating the

disorder, should be carefully observed. Data should be gathered from individual cultures and be

compared for the same. Normally a person would not take into account the cure for disorder as

being the reason for making it worse but it could be very significant when it comes to Autism

Spectrum because affected families have been able connect the dots for the same in the past and

ended with no justifying solutions or answers to their conspiracies. Therefore, I haven’t come

across any study that has investigated it from this point of view and foresee it maybe opening

some gates to plausible answers in the world of research for this topic in particular.
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REFERENCES

1. Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, Laura L. Namy, 2018; From Inquiry to

Understanding; 4th edition

2. Klienknecht et al., 1994; Vriends et al., 2013

3. Sanua, 1981a, 1981b, 1984

4. Dyches TT, Wilder LK, Sudweeks RR, Obiakor FE, Algozzine B. Multicultural issues in

autism. J Autism Dev Disord. 2004; 34:211–222. doi: 10.1023/B:

JADD.0000022611.80478.73

5. (Gillberg, Steffenburg, Börjesson, & Andersson, 1987; Gillberg, Steffenburg, &

Schaumann, 1991; Goodman & Richards, 1995; Wing 1980)

6. Kristina G. Caron; Roseann C. Schaaf; Teal W. Benevides; Eynat Gal; American Journal

of Occupational Therapy, September/October 2012, Vol. 66, e77-e80

7. (Gal, Cermak, & Ben-Sasson, 2007; Rogers et al., 2003; Tomchek & Dunn, 2007)

8. Lydia A. Stewart, Li-Ching Lee; 2017