Author: Glossary

In Hispanic America, a traditional folk healer or shaman who is dedicated to curing physical or spiritual illnesses. Curanderos treat ailments like espanto, suto, and mal de ojo with religious rituals, ceremonial cleansing, and prayers.  

Forms of disturbed behavior and troubling experiences specific to certain cultural systems that do not conform to Western nosological entities or diagnostic systems, such as DSM-IV-TR or ICD-10.  

Feelings of isolation, rejection, and alienation experienced by an individual or a group when transplanted from a familiar to an unfamiliar culture (e.g., moving from one country to another). The emotional trauma of being exposed to the culture, mores, and customs of a culture that is vastly different from the one to which one has…

Acceptance that cultural differences and similarities exist, without assigning values to those cultural differences.  

A branch of social psychiatry concerned with mentally ill persons in relation to their cultural environment. symptoms of behavior regarded as psychopathological in one society may be regarded as acceptable and normal in another.    

The culture with which someone identifies and to which he or she looks for standards of behavior.  

A method of incorporating sociocultural issues into the clinical formulation. The cultural formulation begins with a review of the individual’s cultural identity, which involves not only ethnicity, acculturation/biculturality, and language but also age, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, religious and spiritual beliefs, disabilities, political orientation, and health literacy, among other factors. A systematic review of…

An understanding of the issues that arise between genders, ages, religions, lifestyles, beliefs, physical capabilities, and cultures.  

A set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system or agency or among professionals and that enable effective work in cross-cultural situations. Sensitivity to the cultural, philosophical, religious, and social preferences of people of varying ethnicities or nationalities. Professional skill in the use of such sensitivities facilitates the giving of…

The study of human society with emphasis on how values, customs, beliefs, language, and other patterns of behavior are transmitted by learning from past generations. The study of man and his works or of the learned behavior of man: technology, languages, religions, values, customs, mores, beliefs, social relationships, and family life and structure. Similar to…