Archive for March 2015

Social Work Exam and Culture: Kufungisisa

1:44 AM 0
Continuing our series profiling the cultural concepts of distress included in DSM-5. Next up, Kufungisisa. Here's a quick summary, helpfully posted on Facebook:
Kufungisisa, or "thinking too much," a disorder of distress reported by the Shona people of Zimbabwe. The term represents both a cause of conditions akin to anxiety and depression (eg, "my heart is painful because I think too much") as well as an idiom of psychosocial stressors, such as financial or marital problems. Symptoms can overlap with several DSM diagnoses, including anxiety, panic disorders, and depression. Ruminations and somatic symptoms may be addressed with cognitive-behavioral psychotherapeutic approaches; otherwise, standard treatments for anxiety or depression can be tried.
 More from details around the web:

Social Work Exam and Culture: Khyâl Cap

2:00 PM 0
Continuing to survey the nine cultural concepts of distress listed in DSM-5. Here's Khyâl cup (or Khyâl Attack). Here's a quick definition adapted from the slideshow below.
A syndrome found among Cambodians in the U.S. and Cambodia. Common symptoms include those of panic attacks, such as dizziness, palpitations, shortness of breath, and cold extremities. Catastrophic cognitions center on the concern that kyaal (a wind-like substance) may rise in the body and cause dangerous effects (eg lung compression, asphyxia).
Here's the full definition and a the complete list of nine via kyalattack.com:


More about Khyâl cap at these links (but not, for the moment, at Wikipedia):

Social Work Exam and Culture: Dhat Syndrome

12:35 AM 0
Next up in our survey of culture-specific mental health complexes: Dhat Syndrome. Wikipedia summarizes:
Dhat syndrome is a condition found in the cultures of the Indian subcontinent in which male patients report that they suffer from premature ejaculation or impotence, and believe that they are passing semen in their urine.
Simple as that. Good to know for practice, and possibly for the social work licensing exam.
 
More on dhat syndrome from around the web:

Socal Work Exam and Culture: Ataque de Nervios

12:11 AM 0
The DSM-5 takes a new approach to culture-specific syndromes. But the content is the same. Here's a first in a series to get you up to speed on these syndromes, regardless of which DSM you're using for the exam. First, ataque de nervios. This is from the APA:
Ataque de nervios (“attack of nerves”) is a syndrome among individuals of Latino descent, characterized by symptoms of intense emotional upset, including acute anxiety, anger, or grief; screaming and shouting uncontrollably; attacks of crying; trembling; heat in the chest rising into the head; and becoming verbally and physically aggressive. Dissociative experiences (e.g., depersonalization, derealization, amnesia), seizure-like or fainting episodes, and suicidal gestures are prominent in some ataques but absent in others...
Want more than that? Try:

Culture in DSM-5

4:56 AM 0
What's happened with culturally-bound symptoms in DSM-5? For one thing, they're now called "cultural concepts of distress." And they've been, to some extent, integrated into the main body of the DSM. Here's how the APA explains it in a pdf-only bulletin:
Rather than a simple list of culture-bound syndromes, DSM-5 updates criteria to reflect cross-cultural variations in presentations, gives more detailed and structured information about cultural concepts of distress, and includes a clinical interview tool to facilitate comprehensive, person-centered assessments...
Throughout the DSM-5 development process, the Work Groups made a concerted effort to modify culturally determined criteria so they would be more equivalent across different cultures. In Section II, specific diagnostic criteria were changed to better apply across diverse cultures. For example, the criteria for social anxiety disorder now include the fear of "offending others" to reflect the Japanese concept in which avoiding harm to others is emphasized rather than harm to oneself.
(Here's the complete bulletin, cached by Google.) So can you still expect to see culture-bound cultural concepts on the exam? Yes. They're still relevant as ever (and useful to exam writers faced with coming up with Effects of Diversity items). Here's the APAs DSM-5 list:
  • Ataque de nervios
  • Dhat syndrome
  • Khyâl cap
  • Kufungisisa
  • Maladi moun
  • Nervios
  • Shenjing shuairuo
  • Susto
  • Taijin kyofusho
Knowing the ins and outs of each is probably not necessary. Just being able to ID them as relevant culturally-specific diagnostic information should get you close to the correct answers if not all the way through the exam. If you want to get more familiar with them, Wikipedia awaits (with the old DSM-IV list). Enjoy.

(Note: If you're taking the ASWB exam before July, '15, ignore the DSM-5 parts of this post. The exam will still feature DSM-IV-TR questions till mid-summer.)
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