Psychosis, phenomenology, and culture: Welcoming the ‘black box’

Culture influences all aspects of psychosis, including its onset, manifestations, course, and outcome, and helps explain variations in incidence and phenomenology across countries and populations. This updated review finds a paucity of literature on the phenomenology of psychosis across cultures. It argues for a global perspective to fully understand psychotic phenomena and their relation to cultural contexts. The authors call for renewed attention to phenomenology and for re-theorizing culture as a source of 'moral agency' that individuals can use to pursue mental health recovery in locally meaningful ways.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract This chapter builds on an earlier critical review of literature (through 2011) concerning the relationships between culture and schizophrenia. It updates that review with new literature on the influences of culture on all aspects of psychosis (i.e. onset, manifestations, course, and outcome) and literature invoking culture as an explanation for variations in psychosis (i.e. in phenomenology, incidence, course, and outcome) across countries and populations. As an addition to the original review, this chapter also comments on the paucity of literature on the phenomenology of psychosis across cultures and the importance of taking a global perspective to build a complete view of psychotic phenomena and their relation to the cultures in which people live and grow up. It also argues that there is an urgent need for further attention to phenomenology, as well as a plea for re-theorizing the role of culture, at least in part, as a source of ‘moral agency’ that people can use to seek out mental health recovery in locally meaningful ways.