ArticleCulture, medicine and psychiatry2019
Global Mental Health and Idioms of Distress: The Paradox of Culture-Sensitive Pathologization of Distress in Cambodia.
Article in Culture, medicine and psychiatry, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 73 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Eastern African expressions of suffering: A new Cultural Scripts of Trauma Inventory.PloS one · 2026Article
- Unraveling the interconnectedness of trauma-related common mental disorders in Somali refugees: a network analysis.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- Lived experiences of informal caregivers of adolescents with bipolar disorder at Masaka regional referral hospital.PLOS mental health · 2025Article
- Transforming global health: decoloniality and the human condition.BMJ global health · 2024Article
- Indigenous mental healthcare and human rights abuses in Nigeria: The role of cultural syntonicity and stigmatization.Frontiers in public health · 2023Review
- The methods of improving cultural sensitivity of depression scales for use among global indigenous populations: a systematic scoping review.Global mental health (Cambridge, England) · 2023Article
- Still Standing Inside: A Local Idiom Related to Trauma among Namibian Speakers of Khoekhoegowab.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- A global mental health opportunity: How can cultural concepts of distress broaden the construct of immobility?Global environmental change : human and policy dimensions · 2022Review
- Conceptual and methodological challenges in idioms of distress research: Common questions and a step-by-step guide.Transcultural psychiatry · 2022Article
- The Phenomenology of 'Solved' Reincarnation Stories Among Druze in Israel: Private Self, Symbolic Type and Daily Life.Culture, medicine and psychiatry · 2022Article
- The structure of PTSD. Development of the Post Traumatic Symptom scale from a clinician-based perspective.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2022Article
- Transgenerational Trauma and Mental Health Needs among Armenian Genocide Descendants.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Review
- Cultural Adaptation of Community Informant Tool for Detection of Maternal Depression in Rural Pakistan.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Article
- Engaging culture and context in mhGAP implementation: fostering reflexive deliberation in practice.BMJ global health · 2020Review
- Development of mental healthcare in Cambodia: barriers and opportunities.International journal of mental health systems · 2020Article
- Cultural Scripts of Traumatic Stress: Outline, Illustrations, and Research Opportunities.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
- Considering culture, context and community in mhGAP implementation and training: challenges and recommendations from the field.International journal of mental health systems · 2019Review
- Transcultural Care During the Dying Process: A Phenomenological Study of Nurses' Experiences.Inquiry : a journal of medical care organization, provision and financingArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Efforts to provide culturally appropriate global mental health interventions have included attention to local idioms of distress. This article critically examines the potential gap between lay ethnopsychological understandings of the Cambodian idiom of baksbat (broken courage) on the one hand and clinical conceptualizations of the idiom as a potential indicator of posttraumatic stress disorder. Ethnographic semi-structured interviews with trauma survivors reveal resistance to current clinical translations and hybrid Euro-Western and Khmer treatment interventions. While the notion of idioms of distress is intended to draw attention to everyday non-pathologizing forms of discourse, the creation of hybrid assessment and treatment constructs linking idioms to trauma-related pathology may obscure the pragmatic communicative functions of the idiom, making them subordinate to an existing model of psychiatric disorder and pathologizing everyday modes of coping. Participants' narratives highlight self-perceived connections between stressors that determine the trajectory and outcome of distress and shared cultural worldviews that together uniquely shape their meaning. These observations point to the dilemmas of linking idioms of distress with co-morbid illness constructs in ways that may pathologize normal emotional responses. Results have implications for efforts to develop effective models of post-conflict trauma care in global mental health.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.