Culture and Psychological Health

Abstract

Societies around the world are a tapestry of cultural diversity weaved in globalization to narrate the inherent value of pluralism as a panacea for good mental health, happiness, and the good life. The scientific construction of culture is also a mosaic of ethnic and racial proxies; national worldviews such as individualism and collectivism; and construals of the self as independent and interdependent. Similarly, the culture of psychological health has been informed by the ethnocentric Western paradigm of clinical psychology looking at the “dark” psychopathological side of life and positive psychology focusing on the hedonic and eudaimonic traditions of well-being. Nevertheless, cultural pluralism (multiculturalism) and globalization have contributed to unveiling the limits of the Western paradigm in which both clinical psychology and positive psychology have been embedded and the imperative for a paradigm shift beyond the Western paradigm. The revisioning of clinical psychology as cultural clinical psychology and positive psychology as cultural positive psychology has contributed to the emergence of the more inclusive cultural psychological health perspective. Cultural psychological health considers the culture and psychological health interface to bring light on an integrated approach that narrates how mental health problems are conceptualized, expressed, and ameliorated culturally and how positive mental health is understood, desired, pursued, and promoted culturally. In addition to inclusivity, cultural psychological health pursues scientific inquiry and knowledge through both quantitative and qualitative methodologies and invokes a science and practice informed by the ethical imperatives of cultural competence and cultural humility with social responsiveness to local and global suffering, happiness, and flourishing.