The Role of Cultural Values in the Folk Psychiatry Explanatory Framework

A Comparison of Chinese- and Euro-Canadians

Bibliographic Data

ID7842880
AuthorsSylvanna M Vargas (0000-0002-6824-1842, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA, corresponding author), Jessica Dere (0000-0001-7545-6131, University of Toronto Scarborough, Ontario, Canada), Laura Garcia (0000-0002-8594-8313, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA), Andrew G Ryder (0000-0003-3041-7168, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada)
Year2019
Volume50
Issue5
Pages703-707
Publication date2019-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Cross-Cultural Psychology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-0221 • E-ISSN: 1552-5422
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0022022119836517
OpenAlexW2924737944
LanguageEN
References cited8

The Folk Psychiatry (FP) model proposes a process through which people understand mental illness, comprising four dimensions: pathologizing, moralizing, psychologizing, and medicalizing. Cultural group differences have been observed in previous research using part of this model, with one prior study suggesting that adherence to cultural values may partly explain these differences. The current study, therefore, evaluated whether horizontal–vertical and individualism–collectivism values contribute to explaining Chinese-Canadian (CC) versus Euro-Canadian (EC) cultural group differences among the FP dimensions. Undergraduate CC ( n = 252) and EC ( n = 296) students participated in an online survey, in which they read vignettes about a person exhibiting symptomatic behaviors of major depression. They were then asked about their impressions of the person’s behavior, based on FP scales. Our results show that CCs were more likely to pathologize and moralize the behaviors described in our study vignette, whereas ECs were more likely to employ psychologizing explanations. When compared with ECs, CCs were significantly more likely to endorse vertical individualism and vertical collectivism and less likely to endorse horizontal collectivism. There was an indirect effect of cultural group on moralizing through the endorsement of vertical (i.e., hierarchical) values. Our findings suggest that valuing social order and adherence to social norms may partly explain why some people view mental health problems as a personal fault

Collectivism · Geography · Horizontal and vertical · Individualism · Mental health · Mental illness · Political science · Psychiatry · Vignette · Community Health and Development · Cultural Differences and Values · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology

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