Canino G J, Rubio-Stipec M, Bravo M
Departamento de Psiquiatría, Universidad de Puerto Rico, San Juan.
Acta Psiquiatr Psicol Am Lat. 1988 Sep;34(3):251-9.
The utility of transcultural psychiatric epidemiology research is discussed as well as the methodological difficulties inherent in this type of investigation. The comparison across different cultures of the prevalence and incidence of mental illness in population studies can be used to obtain a better understanding of the risk and etiological factors involved in the development of specific psychiatric disorders. Nevertheless, most population studies have been carried out in developing countries mostly due to the complexity and high cost of these studies. As a consequence, a gap in psychiatric knowledge is created between the developed and developing countries resulting in the false notion that many of the psychiatric disorders observed in developed countries are universal to all human beings. The cross-cultural validity of certain psychiatric disorders based on the American Psychiatric Nosology (DSM III) are discussed. The article discusses the methodological difficulties which arise from the need of maintaining methods and criteria uniform in cross-cultural studies in order to allow comparisons, as well as the need of incorporating into the methodology the cultural differences existent in the manifestation or definition of the specific psychiatric disorders studied. Various possible methodologies are discussed which address this dilemma, such as the combination of empirical and ethnographic approaches and the cross-cultural comparison of empirically defined syndromes.
本文讨论了跨文化精神疾病流行病学研究的实用性以及这类调查中固有的方法学困难。在人群研究中，对不同文化中精神疾病的患病率和发病率进行比较，有助于更好地理解特定精神障碍发生发展过程中的风险因素和病因。然而，由于此类研究的复杂性和高成本，大多数人群研究是在发展中国家开展的。结果，发达国家和发展中国家之间出现了精神医学知识的差距，导致人们错误地认为在发达国家观察到的许多精神障碍是全人类普遍存在的。文章还讨论了基于美国精神疾病分类法（DSM-III）的某些精神障碍的跨文化效度。本文探讨了在跨文化研究中为便于比较而保持方法和标准统一所产生的方法学困难，以及在方法学中纳入所研究的特定精神障碍在表现形式或定义方面存在的文化差异的必要性。文中讨论了应对这一困境的各种可能方法，如实证方法与民族志方法的结合以及对实证定义综合征的跨文化比较。
