Schizophrenia in Muslim cultures

Abstract EN

The cultural background beliefs, attitudes and practices against which clinical psychopathology is measured are most relevant to the diagnosis and management of schizophrenia.

unlike western inpatient facilities, men outnumber women among psychiatric inpatients in the Arab world because the stigma of mental hospital admission is much greater for women, especially in those who are diagnosed with schizophrenia.

the frequency of cousin marriage and positive family history of schizophrenia is more likely in Muslim than western cultures.

it is important to distinguish first-rank symptoms of schizophrenia from culturally shared beliefs about demons/devils.

these supernatural agents are believed to tempt human beings to carry out undesirable behavior or to forget to do acceptable acts with no sensory experience of the agents by vision, hearing or other sensory perceptions, which are pathological perceptual experiences.

the somatic expressions of distress by patients are reciprocated by somatically trained doctors who assess for organic etiology and induce hypochondriasis in many patients with schizophrenia.

the families’ social support for their members is reduced by intergenerational conflict and increases professional and traditional help-seeking for emotional and behavioral symptoms, e.g.

in schizophrenia.

expressed emotions of relatives of patients with schizophrenia include warmth and positive comments.

the traditional Muslim family can develop individual programs of social contacts that prevents social withdrawal and improve the outlook in schizophrenia.

projection of responsibility for wrong doing onto supernatural agents limits how comments on people with schizophrenia has been reported in western cultures.