cultural medicine

Approach in clinical medicine that involves taking into account a patient's culture, ethnicity, and religion when making a diagnosis. It includes diet-related problems, how illness is perceived in different cultures, birth and death customs, and variation in drug dosage depending on ethnic group.

Cultural psychiatry is a branch of cultural medicine. Some mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, appear in all cultures, but others are more culture-specific. For example, ‘possession’ and trance states may be viewed as within the normal range of behaviour at times of upheaval in some non-Western societies, but would usually be treated with drugs within Western societies. The course followed by the illness may also vary from culture to culture.