African Ethnopsychiatry in the Field

Margetts, Edward L.

doi:10.1177/070674376801300609

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Defining these values is very difficult, because they may partly depend on cultural, social, and personal expectations. Thus the distinction between normality and abnormality can be culture-specific and different in Africa compared to Europe (Margetts, 1968). This difference might be due simply to the fact that PD traits do not reach scalar invariance or might be attributed to actual differences.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personality and Personality Disorders in Urban and Rural Africa: Results from a Field Trial in Burkina Faso

Rossier¹,

Ouedraogo²,

Dahourou³

et al. 2013

Front. Psychol.

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When conducting research in different cultural settings, assessing measurement equivalence is of prime importance to determine if constructs and scores can be compared across groups. Structural equivalence implies that constructs have the same meaning across groups, metric equivalence implies that the metric of the scales remains stable across groups, and full scale or scalar equivalence implies that the origin of the scales is the same across groups. Several studies have observed that the structure underlying both normal personality and personality disorders (PDs) is stable across cultures. Most of this cross-cultural research was conducted in Western and Asian cultures. In Africa, the few studies were conducted with well-educated participants using French or English instruments. No research was conducted in Africa with less privileged or preliterate samples. The aim of this research was to study the structure and expression of normal and abnormal personality in an urban and a rural sample in Burkina Faso. The sample included 1,750 participants, with a sub-sample from the urban area of Ouagadougou (n = 1,249) and another sub-sample from a rural village, Soumiaga (n = 501). Most participants answered an interview consisting of a Mooré language adaptation of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory and of the International Personality Disorders Examination. Mooré is the language of the Mossi ethnic group, and the most frequently spoken local language in Burkina Faso. A sub-sample completed the same self-report instruments in French. Demographic variables only had a small impact on normal and abnormal personality traits mean levels. The structure underlying normal personality was unstable across regions and languages, illustrating that translating a complex psychological inventory into a native African language is a very difficult task. The structure underlying abnormal personality and the metric of PDs scales were stable across regions. As scalar equivalence was not reached, mean differences cannot be interpreted. Nevertheless, these differences could be due to an exaggerated expression of abnormal traits valued in the two cultural settings. Our results suggest that studies using a different methodology should be conducted to understand what is considered, in different cultures, as deviating from the expectations of the individual’s culture, and as a significant impairment in self and interpersonal functioning, as defined by the DSM-5.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personality and Personality Disorders in Urban and Rural Africa: Results from a Field Trial in Burkina Faso

Rossier¹,

Ouedraogo²,

Dahourou³

et al. 2013

Front. Psychol.

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“…At the Oracle of Trophonius, sacrifices, divination, and various other rituals including drinking "the water of forgetfulness" were followed by supine confinement in a small subterranean chamber as a kind of shock treatment to induce regression, personality change, and "rebirth." The use of sensory deprivation has also been reported from a variety of nonwestern traditional folk medicines, including the African (Margetts, 1968) and the North American Indian (Jilek, in press).…”

Section: B 8d As Therapeutic Facilitatormentioning

confidence: 98%

The clinical relevance of reduced sensory stimulation.

Suedfeld¹

1975

Canadian Psychological Review / Psychologie Canadienne

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Reviews theoretical and empirical connections between psychopathology, therapy, and reduced sensory stimulation. Decreases in sensory and social stimulation have been found to cause or aggravate psychological as well as physical dysfunctions in a wide variety of contexts. Such deprivation in infancy may lead to irreversible damage, while even brief periods of deprivation in adulthood have effects which, although temporary, are quite dramatic. At the same time, there is evidence that sensory deprivation is a promising therapeutic method or adjunct to other methods. (172 ref)

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Anthropology and psychiatry: the contemporary convergence

Jenkins

2007

Textbook of Cultural Psychiatry

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EDITORS' INTRODUCTION Anthropology and psychiatry as disciplines appear to have a considerable amount of common ground. Both are interested in human beings, the societies within which they live and their behaviours. A key starting difference between the two is anthropology's interest in relativism, whereas psychiatry has been interested in universalism. Also, both anthropology and psychiatry have a long history of common interest in phenomenology and the qualitative dimensions of human experience, as well as a broader comparative and epidemiological approach. jenkins illustrates the common ground by emphasizing that both disciplines contribute to the philosophical questions of meaning and experience raised by cultural diversity in mental illness and healing. Both disciplines also contribute to the practical problems of identifying and treating distress of patients from diverse ethnic and religious groups. Psychiatry focuses on individual biography and pathology, thereby giving it a unique relevance and transformation. Patient narratives thus become of great interest to clinicians and anthropologists. Development of specializations such as medical or clinical anthropology puts medicine in general and psychiatry in particular under a magnifying glass. Using Jungian psychology as an exemplar could lead to a clearer identification of convergence between the two disciplines. The nexus between anthropology of emotion and the study of psychopathology identified in her own work by Jenkins looks at normality and abnormality, feeling and emotion, variability of course and outcome, among others. She ends the chapter on an optimistic note, highlighting the fact that the convergence between these two disciplines remains a very fertile ground for generating ideas and issues with the potential to stimulate both disciplines.

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African Ethnopsychiatry in the Field

Abstract: This paper is on cultural rather than transcultural, cross-cultural, comparative or international psychiatry, terms much in use these days (28,82,84,95).

Cited by 3 publications

References 32 publications

Personality and Personality Disorders in Urban and Rural Africa: Results from a Field Trial in Burkina Faso

Personality and Personality Disorders in Urban and Rural Africa: Results from a Field Trial in Burkina Faso

The clinical relevance of reduced sensory stimulation.

Anthropology and psychiatry: the contemporary convergence

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