The Role of Cultural Values in the Folk Psychiatry Explanatory Framework: A Comparison of Chinese- and Euro-Canadians

Abstract

The Folk Psychiatry (FP) model proposes a process through which people understand mental illness, comprising four dimensions: pathologizing, moralizing, psychologizing, and medicalizing. Cultural group differences have been observed in previous research using part of this model, with one prior study suggesting that adherence to cultural values may partly explain these differences. The current study, therefore, evaluated whether horizontal–vertical and individualism–collectivism values contribute to explaining Chinese-Canadian (CC) versus Euro-Canadian (EC) cultural group differences among the FP dimensions. Undergraduate CC ( n = 252) and EC ( n = 296) students participated in an online survey, in which they read vignettes about a person exhibiting symptomatic behaviors of major depression. They were then asked about their impressions of the person’s behavior, based on FP scales. Our results show that CCs were more likely to pathologize and moralize the behaviors described in our study vignette, whereas ECs were more likely to employ psychologizing explanations. When compared with ECs, CCs were significantly more likely to endorse vertical individualism and vertical collectivism and less likely to endorse horizontal collectivism. There was an indirect effect of cultural group on moralizing through the endorsement of vertical (i.e., hierarchical) values. Our findings suggest that valuing social order and adherence to social norms may partly explain why some people view mental health problems as a personal fault.

The folk psychiatry model: Developing a measure of lay perceptions of PTSD.

“…Despite supporting evidence, options for the systematic assessment of folk psychiatry domains remain limited. Vargas et al (2019) reported the evaluation of moralizing, medicalizing, and psychologizing beliefs using a study-specific scale in participants presented with depression-focused vignettes. However, individual items and the psychometric properties of scores were not provided.…”

“…Analyses failed to identify meaningful associations with gender, but the extent to which results generalize to more diverse communities-or the intersection of sex, gender, and culture across different populations-remains unknown. Existing research has demonstrated potential cultural variations in causal explanations of depression based on specific social norms and the valuation of social hierarchies (Vargas et al, 2019). Additional evidence highlights the impact of cultural context on beliefs about trauma, PTSD, and recovery (e.g., Bryant-Davis, 2019).…”