Strange or Just Plain Weird? Cultural Variation in Mental Illness

There’s an old saying that psychology has two model organisms: the rat and the American college student. As research subjects rats are fine, the problem is that that Americans are, as evolutionary psychologist Joe Henrich and his colleagues recently pointed out, WEIRD. That is, they’re Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic. In fact, most westerners are WEIRD, but Americans are the WEIRDest of all. – Dominic Murphy, University of Sydney.

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Read the original article, the third in a series (“Matters of Mind”) examining the DSM, and the controversy surrounding the forthcoming fifth edition.

Part one: Explainer – What is the DSM and how are mental disorders diagnosed?

Part two: Forget talking, just fill a script: How modern psychiatry lost its mind.