Cultural Variations in Depression

Mustafaeva (2015) describes metaphors used to discuss depression across culrtures:

Chinese - "gloomy/depressed/ frustrated sickness" having "lost meaning, inhibited, constrained, worried and restrained" (p.21).

Japanese - make more use of external referents "dark. rain, cloud"

Korean - colour words like Blue "everything that surrounds me is dark and black"

Punjabi - tend to describe as "weight on heart or mind" gas building up "pressure"and feelings of heat (ayruvedic).

Turkish - also use heaviness metaphor in chest, "squeezed heart"

Taiwanese - use "fan-zao" anxious worried feelings.

Somatization - bodily complaints and conditions that result from psychological distress.  Some research has suggested that Hispanics, Japanese, Chinese and Arabs tend to somatize more that do Europeans and Americans.

Other recent publications suggest that this is not the case, rather that given doctor patient contexts there is open expression among Chinese patients and that somatization is a universal phenomenon.

Mustafaeva (2015) Traditional Chinese medicine locates in emotions in body.

Liver is the source of headaches, epigrastric pain, hypertension & anger (gan zhu nu / nu shang gan )

Heart is source of anxiety, uncertainty & fear

where Emotional distress - unhappiness and worrying are seen to be grounded in heart and liver.

Koreans describe Hwa-Byung as an anger syndrome with depression & restraint, somatic illness (palpitaions, headache & heat) and neurotic symptoms.

Dubai - somatic depression is observed in chest having fatigue & lack of body energy (ta' bana) nausea, limb pain & poor appetite (liver-chabid).

Afghan - depression as sadness with guilt - complaints of nervourness & headaches, weakness, tiredness, imbalance and somatization.

Jigar Khun - sadness & grief - following interpersonal loss.

Asabir - nervous - highly stressed - from major life stressors.

Omidian (1996) describes these as:

asabee (asabi) - physical and emotional discomfort

narahat - discomfort &/or anxiety and depression.

Fishar-e-bala - high blood pressure - (agitation)

Fishar-e-payin - low blood pressure (low energy and motivation).