Meth-drinkers and lotus-eaters: some educational aspects of transcultural psychiatry in Papua New Guinea.

The rapid development of Third-World societies in the Pacific Region, as elsewhere, involves modern, traditional and idiosyncratic factors. Often this complex of interaction is expressed or symbolically exemplified in aberrant behaviors. The paper presents some examples from Papua New Guinea, including methyl-alcohol poisoning amongst students and cargo cults, as part of an interface between traditional and modern. Such aberrant and psychotic behaviors provide a datum for curricula and clinical services. Psychiatric efforts via related disciplines such as anthropology, can provide dramatic pan-human insights into development for contemporary educational and health-delivery services, ultimately with more meaning for recipients, practitioners and research.