Pobough Lang in Senegal

Psychiatry in Africa: Special Problems and Unique Features

“…Pobough lang may be an example of a genuine culture-bound syndrome with a distinctive symptom pattern. Pobough Lang (Beiser et al, 1974) was identified among the Serer of Senegal. Characterized by geophagia, pallor, depression and social withdrawal, the syndrome occurred in 5 per 1000 of the Serer population.…”

Pica and in Cross-Cultural Perspective

“…In more southerly parts of Eweland, geophagy was strongly and nearly exclusively the preserve of pregnant women. Men also seemed to figure in reports of more severe geophagy associated with anaemia (Beiser, Burr, Collomb, et al, 1974) or &dquo;severe addiction&dquo; (Anell, 1958) and among slaves in the West Indies (Lagercranz, 1958). Pica seems to be widely tolerated in infants until weaning.…”

“…A of in-depth field by (to which we have already referred) added considerably to the literature (Hunter and de ~~1~~, Vermeer, 1966Vermeer, , 1971Vermeer andFrate, 1975, 1979). Although psychiatrists have not been much involved in crosscultural work on pica, has described a folk illness involving which was discovered during a survey of psychiatric disin (Beiser, Ravel, Collomb, et al, 1972;Beiser, Burr, Collomb, et al, 1974) and Eastwell has pica outbreaks among older female Aborigines in Australia (Eastwell, 1979).…”

Abstracts and Reviews : 4 Australia

“…Women were said to taunt men by saying that they would give up eating clay in public when the men stopped drinking. Beiser et al (1974) compare the ambiguous nosologic position of a Senegalese &dquo;folk illness&dquo; involving compulsive geophagia to differing Western views on alcoholism. In both cases, moral and medical models coexist within the society.…”