Dr. Timothy McCajor Hall's website on Culture-Bound Syndromes in China four different culture bond syndroms: Suro yang (Koro), Shenkui “semen loss syndrome”, qi-gong psychotic reaction and neurasthenia.
Suo yang (Koro) is also known as genital retraction syndrome (GRS). This is the belief that the genitals will retreat into your body and (according to tradition) says it is typically fatal. The etic view is this is hyperinvolution. Typically this occurs in large epidemics instead of soli individual cases. The cases tend to happen when people are experiencing more stressors then normal. I agree with the author’s comment that “GRS cases seem to be similar in many ways to the Western category of panic attack, with sexual elaborations”.
Neuasthenia (Shenjing shuairuo) which is a kind of “encouraged” Somatisations. The symptoms are similar to our symptoms for “major depressive disorder”. Some symptoms are: increased fatigue, “bodily weakness and exhaustion after minimal effort” “muscular aches, tension headaches; sleep disturbance; inability to relax; irritability; dyspepsia”,
I think a lot of culture bound syndromes are brought on my abundant stressors. They should be signs telling you to slow down. At least in Western societies, I believe a lot of them could be handled without medicine by just taking a vacation (if possible) and relaxing. Cultural myths also have a large influence on culture bound syndromes. For example: yes GRS would probably be frightening, however, the myth says this could cause death... making things much more terrifying (and, in some situations, such as voodoo cases, possibly fatal)
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Its very interesting how cultures have these myths, and voodoo's about health issues and what they will do to cure them. It is odd how sex is preformed the same through out the world, yet every culture treats genitals differently aka mutation.
ReplyDeleteThe point that culture bound syndromes may be related to stress is an interesting hypothesis. Rather than associating CBS to the individual (i.e., personal stress and the need to "take a vacation"), I think it may be useful to look at the ways in which stress is culturally constructed. In other words, what is "stressful" in one culture is not always going to be stressful in another, because social roles (norms and expectations) are going to be different.
ReplyDeleteEven though some of the symptoms of stress appear to be universal, others--such as retraction of the genitals--appear quite unusual from a North American perspective!
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ReplyDeleteThis case of somatization definatly seems to be related to the voodoo cases!!! If you truely believe such things and get such high levels of anxiety over it, your body will definatly react negatively and in some cases possibly even cause death!! It's easy to say they simply need to relax, which i agree with you that they need to.. However, when a belief is in your culture and the enculturation had been informaly learnt from a young age.. it's all you know and hard to think otherwise when there is emic proof of these symptom!!
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. The link between body and mind is really amazing. Wouldn't these be considered ethno-eiteologies because they are symptoms experienced by all people but given a different explanation?
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