CULTURE IN PSYCHIATRIC-DIAGNOSIS - AN ISSUE OF SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY

THE REVISED version of the third edition of the American Psychiatric A ssociation's (1987) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disord ers (DSM-III-R) gives scant attention to the significance of culture. Two paragraphs in the Introduction advising caution when using the Man ual in different cultures (pp. xxvi-xxvii) are followed by more than 5 00 pages in which the relevance of culture remains basically unrecogni zed. This neglect is problematical: Ethnological research has repeated ly demonstrated the cultural plasticity of human behavior, so much so, in fact, as to controvert the unqualified attribution of psychiatric meaning to symptoms or sets of symptoms (Rogler, 1993). Yet, despite t he scant attention given to culture, the DSM-III and its revised versi on are more widely used cross-nationally in teaching, research, and cl inical practice than any other system for classifying mental illnesses (Maser et al. 1991).