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Purpose – This chapter has two central purposes. The first is to suggest that western, as well as non-western, illness categories are culture bound. The second is to elucidate the diagnostic and treatment implications associated with adopting a reductionistic diagnostic approach, including for psychiatric as well as nonpsychiatric illnesses.

Approach – A comparative approach is used to highlight the differences between American psychiatry's diagnostic system (i.e., DSM) and French child psychiatry's diagnostic system (CFTMEA). The analysis begins by identifying the overarching differences between the systems, then analyzes the differences between their respective versions of the Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder diagnostic category, and ends by tracing the diagnostic and treatment implications of those differences.

Findings – This analysis reveals that the systems differ in three significant ways: (1) theoretical orientation (biological vs. psychodynamic), (2) the view that symptoms should be counted as opposed to understood, and (3) the presence of symptom checklists versus their absence. Additionally, these differences encourage American clinicians to both administer the ADHD diagnosis to a greater number of symptomatic children and to treat these children with psychiatric medications.

Contributions to the field – The analysis makes three contributions to the field: (1) the comparative analysis highlights the limitations of the DSM's ADHD definition; (2) it strengthens the case for seeing western diagnostic categories in general, and the DSM categories in particular, as cultural artifacts; (3) it elucidates the profound relationship between diagnostic systems and both diagnostic rates and treatment practices.

The health status and medical care of migrant populations is an increasingly important topic in light of the recent emergence of a number of global epidemics. This paper aims to investigate the prevalence of diseases, injuries, and other health problems in the Caribbean‐American population of Miami, Florida.

A sample of 290 Caribbean‐born permanent adult residents of Miami, representing 17 different Caribbean countries of origin, was interviewed at three health clinics regarding current health problems and treatments. Demographic data were also collected.

In total, 38 percent of the respondents indicated past or current health problems requiring professional medical care, while an additional 7 percent engaged in self‐care. The 62 different reported conditions ranged from lung cancer to ulcers, kidney stones, clinical depression, scoliosis, and diverticulitis. The most frequently stated disorders were hypertension, asthma, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and arthritis. Anti‐hypertensives, cardiac modifiers, and analgesics accounted for the majority of the 26 reported prescription medications. A smaller number indicated the usage of chemotherapy, insulin, allergy medicines, and other individualized prescriptions. A total of 62.5 percent of the respondents employed traditional medicinal plants for preventive and therapeutic care or to supplement biomedicines in the treatment of culture‐bound syndromes.

The epidemiological profile of this sample suggests a positive correlation between genetically‐influenced degenerative disorders and urbanization.

This research reveals the health profile of a previously unstudied population and hopefully will guide future treatment plans for this and similar communities.

This paper aims to in the modern world, possessing an attractive appearance is often considered a highly valued attribute. As such, the perceptions and satisfaction with one’s body are shaped by dominant cultural norms. Adolescents, women in particular, who are heavily influenced by media representations, may tend to have a distorted body image (BI), including adopting extreme dieting methods. This study reviews the adverse effects of excessive weight loss associated with this.

The authors searched journals and the internet for relevant literature using the keywords “eating disorders”, “body image” and “weight stigma”. In the case study field, they added papers that considered “nutrition” to identify the link between dieting behaviour and nutrition. From these reviews, the authors ultimately selected 190 articles that appeared to meet their research objectives. The papers cover a range of studies published between 1995 and 2023.

Among adolescent girls and young women in their early 20s, there is a social media-driven culture of being extremely thin and petite. Weight stigma puts more pressure on them and makes strange behaviours like pro-ana syndrome a part of the culture. The authors have seen that modern BI standards leave young women vulnerable to eating disorders caused by excessive dieting.

Adolescence is a time of continuous growth, so balanced nutrition is essential. However, biased societal standards of beauty can push adolescent girls who are sensitive to external gaze into excessive dieting and make eating disorders a culture. This review provides a perspective on the behaviours that should be pursued for a healthy BI.

While awaiting resolution of their legal process, undocumented migrants (UM) face several challenges, including limited access to public health care. The purpose of this paper is to survey UM attending a detention centre in Oporto (Portugal) to estimate the prevalence of mental health disorders in this population.

A retrospective chart review was performed with the relevant sociodemographic and clinical data of all UM in the process of coercive removal from Portuguese territory, observed by Doctors of the World, during three years (2014–2016). The Tenth Version of International Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders was used for nosological classification.

In total, 393 detainees were eligible for the study. Most detainees were male (84 per cent) and 76 months was the mean length of stay in Portugal before detention. In total, 29 per cent of detainees were diagnosed with a mental and behavioural disorder. The most prevalent diagnosis was neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders (47 per cent). UM with dual diagnosis (28 per cent) led to the articulation with the integrated centres of drug addiction, which provided and monitored opioid substitution therapy. Female UM were more prone to develop any mental and behavioural disorder when compared to men (χ²=7,017; p<0.05).

In total, 9 per cent of the detainees were excluded from this study due to incomplete data on their medical charts. Some detainees presented oppositional behaviour, hostility towards others and refused to be assessed by the medical team. Both situations could have biased the prevalence of mental disorders. Finally, the appropriateness of the western model of mental health disorders (ICD-10) in the study population is controversial, considering the culture-bound phenomenology and syndromes.

This paper identified the most prevalent mental health disorders in UM detained in Portugal. The most prevalent mental health disorders were either stress-related (associated with the detention itself) or related to previous patterns of substance abuse. Given the study outcomes, it is highly recommended to mobilise human and technical resources to provide specialized mental health care to UM at least while detention policies could not be changed.

Brain Fag Syndrome (BFS) is a psychiatric disorder associated with study affecting two to four out of every ten African students. One of the consequences of this illness is early fore-closure of education in affected students. Etiological factors such as nervous predisposition, motivation for achievement, and psycho-stimulant use have been found associated with it. However, the contributions of study habits to the pathogenesis of this study-related illness deserve more attention than has been given. We carried out this cross-sectional study to ascertain the types of study habits associated with BFS among a sample of senior secondary school students in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Five hundred students from six schools in Ile-Ife were selected using a stratified random sampling technique. The selected students completed the Socio-demographic Data Schedule, the Brain Fag Syndrome Scale, and Bakare's Study Habit Inventory. The prevalence of BFS was 40.2% (201). There were no significant socio-demographic variables identifying BFS students apart from those without BFS. The significant measures of study habits that predicted BFS were homework and assignments, examinations, and written work. Those with BFS had 3.58 times the odds to perform poorly on homework and assignments, 3.27 times the odds to perform poorly on examinations, and 1.01 times the odds to perform poorly on written work compared to those without BFS. We concluded that the results of this study suggest that homework and assignments, examinations, and written work were significant study habit variables associated with BFS.

The purpose of this paper is to review the existing literature on mass murder and amok, and the relationship of these phenomena to murder-suicide as well as to determine future research directions.

Research literature on mass murder, amok, and murder-suicide was reviewed in the context of recent developments in the understanding of suicide, aggressive behavior, and psychiatric diagnostics.

Amok, typically viewed as a culture-bound disorder, occurs throughout the world and is best characterized as mass murder, similar to school shootings. Additionally, the phenomenon of mass murder may be best understood as a form of murder-suicide, related to the phenomenon of suicide-by-cop.

This paper provides a review of the literature on murder-suicide, mass murder, and amok spanning over 110 years in the context of modern psychological research, new insights into the possible motivations of those who “run amok” and commit mass murder and provides future research directions for this important phenomenon.