Abstract

M.S.P.H.,Psychiatry Around edition -byjulian Psychiatric Press, paperbound.Daryl Leff B. Matthews, begins with fourGlobe: London, Washington,Leff;A Transcultural Gaskell (distributed D.C.), 1988, 226View, second by American pages, $29.95,M.D.,to the Tswapong thatas theirsis to us.”the readerjourney. Are the presenting features of mental disorders uniform across cultures? Do mental disorders have the same frequency in different cultures? Are they treated similarly? Do they have the same course? Leff subsequently answers these questions with thoughtful, concise reviews ofThe author addresses a broad range ofissues: the fundamental natune of the “culture-bound” syndromes of latah, amok, koro, and,analogously, anorexia nervosa; thethe pertinentand epide-forces behind the efof exorcism in treating mental disorder; and the adjustment difficulties faced by Asian psychiatrists who have emigrated to the West. His perspective throughout is even-handed, empirically based, andinterpersonal fectivenessmiological studies. He explains in detail the methodologic pitfalls of cross-cultural psychiatric research and, in the process, illustrates manybasic epidemiological principles-theoretically neutral. For example, he concludesschizophrenia and bipolarthat disorderare universaland presumablybiolog-tinguishing schizophrcniform disorden from schizophrenia in its current classificatory system. He derides the use of the term “dissociation” in discussions of psychopathology as “no more than a cloak for ignorance,” and he finds that, as practiced in traditional cultures, “divination, far from