{"title":"Majnūn or Mental Disorders: Between Cultural Traditions and Western Psychology in Jordan.","authors":"Dovilė Valaitė, Renatas Berniūnas","doi":"10.1007/s11013-022-09787-0","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Mental disorders or altered psychological states are prevalent in all populations, regardless of race or ethnic origin, while at the same time, culture also shapes the conceptions of mental disorders. Religion is deeply rooted in the daily life of the Muslim-majority countries, while Arab countries are affected by an ongoing modernization. Thus, how does the traditional religious conception of mental disorders interact with Western psychological conceptions in contemporary Arab-Muslim society? This study explores the conceptions of mental disorders and their causes among Muslims in contemporary Jordan. By employing cognitive anthropological method (free listing), forty participants were asked to provide three lists of (a) typical names of mental disorders, (b) causes of mental disorders and (c) determining features of mental disorders. Collected qualitative data have been quantitatively analysed and interpreted in the context of relevant ethnographic and interview data. While Western terms of mental disorders are well known among young and educated Jordanians, the study demonstrates that Jordanians employ cultural and religious notions alongside. This co-existence of different conceptions confirms an importance of Islamic notion in the modern rendering of mental health. As a result, despite rapid modernization, mental health is still highly stigmatized.</p>","PeriodicalId":47634,"journal":{"name":"Culture Medicine and Psychiatry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Culture Medicine and Psychiatry","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-022-09787-0","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2022/8/10 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Mental disorders or altered psychological states are prevalent in all populations, regardless of race or ethnic origin, while at the same time, culture also shapes the conceptions of mental disorders. Religion is deeply rooted in the daily life of the Muslim-majority countries, while Arab countries are affected by an ongoing modernization. Thus, how does the traditional religious conception of mental disorders interact with Western psychological conceptions in contemporary Arab-Muslim society? This study explores the conceptions of mental disorders and their causes among Muslims in contemporary Jordan. By employing cognitive anthropological method (free listing), forty participants were asked to provide three lists of (a) typical names of mental disorders, (b) causes of mental disorders and (c) determining features of mental disorders. Collected qualitative data have been quantitatively analysed and interpreted in the context of relevant ethnographic and interview data. While Western terms of mental disorders are well known among young and educated Jordanians, the study demonstrates that Jordanians employ cultural and religious notions alongside. This co-existence of different conceptions confirms an importance of Islamic notion in the modern rendering of mental health. As a result, despite rapid modernization, mental health is still highly stigmatized.
期刊介绍:
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry is an international and interdisciplinary forum for the publication of work in three interrelated fields: medical and psychiatric anthropology, cross-cultural psychiatry, and related cross-societal and clinical epidemiological studies. The journal publishes original research, and theoretical papers based on original research, on all subjects in each of these fields. Interdisciplinary work which bridges anthropological and medical perspectives and methods which are clinically relevant are particularly welcome, as is research on the cultural context of normative and deviant behavior, including the anthropological, epidemiological and clinical aspects of the subject. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry also fosters systematic and wide-ranging examinations of the significance of culture in health care, including comparisons of how the concept of culture is operationalized in anthropological and medical disciplines. With the increasing emphasis on the cultural diversity of society, which finds its reflection in many facets of our day to day life, including health care, Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry is required reading in anthropology, psychiatry and general health care libraries.