Karasz Alison, Dempsey Kara, Fallek Ronit
Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center, The Bronx, NY 10467, USA.
Cult Med Psychiatry. 2007 Dec;31(4):473-97. doi: 10.1007/s11013-007-9066-y.
This paper describes a study of medically ambiguous symptoms in two contrasting cultural groups. The study combined a qualitative, meaning-centered approach with a structured coding system and comparative design. Thirty-six South Asian immigrants and thirty-seven European Americans participated in a semistructured health history interview designed to elicit conceptual models of medically unexplained illness. The groups reported similar symptoms, but the organization of illness episodes and explanatory models associated with these episodes differed sharply. A variety of cultural variables and processes is proposed to account for observed differences, including somatization, the role of local illness categories, and the divergent core conflicts and values associated with gender roles. It is argued that the comparative design of the study provided insights that could not have been achieved through the study of a single group.
本文描述了对两个不同文化群体中具有医学模糊性症状的一项研究。该研究将一种定性的、以意义为中心的方法与结构化编码系统及比较设计相结合。三十六名南亚移民和三十七名欧裔美国人参与了一项半结构化健康史访谈,该访谈旨在引出对医学上无法解释的疾病的概念模型。两组报告了相似的症状,但疾病发作的组织方式以及与这些发作相关的解释模型却有很大差异。提出了多种文化变量和过程来解释所观察到的差异,包括躯体化、当地疾病类别的作用,以及与性别角色相关的不同核心冲突和价值观。有人认为,该研究的比较设计提供了通过对单个群体进行研究无法获得的见解。