Question

How does cross-cultural research suggest that psychopathology is universal rather than a social construction?

Answer 1

• Cross cultural studies take a universal view on psychopathology and mental illness.According to the universal approach,in diagnostic classificatory systems for psychopathology states that some disorders (i.e., autism, schizophrenia, fragile X syndrome and other pervasive developmental disorders) are more likely to be universal in all cultures because they are mostly based on neural pathology.
• However, other more common disorders, even though they may share a biological or genetic substrate, are more likely to be shaped by social context, cultural norms and developmental stage.
• The basic premise of the universalist view is that psychiatric disorders and syndromes are universal and have core symptoms that cluster into universal syndromal patterns. According to this view, what could vary across cultures or sub-groups within a culture is the symptomatic manifestation of the disorder or the threshold of what is considered pathological versus normal behavior.
• Thus, the same internal disorder can be manifested differently in different cultures but the underlying psychopathology is the same across cultures.
• In the Anglo culture, the child exhibits disobedience with external and direct behavior and by overtly refusing to comply with the adult’s request. In the Thai society, disobedience is manifested by the child looking uninterested, or hesitating, signaling his unwillingness to obey.
• However, in both societies disobedience, when it is accompanied by a cluster of other defiant behaviors, is recognized as a symptom of oppositional defiant disorder.
• The assumption of the universalist is that the same set of criteria and symptom clusters is observed across cultures, or the same set of syndromal clusters, even if the manifestation of the symptom varies cross-culturally.