"'Lucy the Elephant'
On the Atlantic Beach,
Near Atlantic City, NJ,
2003."
People from some cultures may do business or assimilate into mainstream US culture much more easily than others. Despite historical differences with Imperialist Japan as the 'Axis' nation which bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941 and drew the US into World War II, Japanese have successfully sold electronics, computers, and many other products in the US.
Many Japanese interpersonal issues also are important in the US. Japanese products have a good reputation for reliability at an affordable price. 'Taijin kyofu sho' describes an individual's intense fear that his or her body may displease others in appearance, odor, facial expression, or movements. These concerns, shared in the US, have helped to build the modern US personal hygiene industry of soaps, deodorants, lotions, and other products.
These more rational ethnic personal and interpersonal concerns are adaptive and economically useful in business and trade. Other cross-cultural issues may be irrational and disruptive.
'Lat ah' is known in Japan and in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippine Islands, and Russia's Siberia. 'Lat ah' involves dissociation or trances. 'Lat ah' complaints are consistent with US and European descriptions of schizophrenia and other thought disorders, often exhibited behaviorally. The 'lat ah' may complain of a hypersensitivity to their surroundings, then sudden fright, often accompanied by repetitive, stereotyped behaviors like 'rocking', cursing, and often describes their behaviors as being ordered by an inner voice as in 'command obedience' or a 'command phantasy'. Found with increased frequency in middle-aged women, a woman may physically or verbally abuse her child stating she had been told to do so.
In India, 'dhat' is severe anxiety, body discomfort, weakness, exhaustion. 'Dhat' is similar to 'sukra prameba' in Sri Lanka, and 'shon-k'-rui' in China.
Koreans exhibit 'hwa-byung', suppressed anger syndrome. Complaints may include difficulty sleeping, fatigue, panic, fear of impending death, unhappiness, indigestion, eating disorders, sometimes complaints of a mass in the stomach.
'Shin-bying' includes anxiety and complaints of body discomfort with a sense of being possessed by ancestral spirits. Similarly, Native American Indians complain of 'ghost sickness' with thoughts of death, deceased relatives or friends, bad dreams, body discomfort like suffocating, feelings of futility, confusion, hallucination and sometimes loss of consciousness.
'Zar' in Ethiopia, Somalia, North Africa, Egypt, the Sudan, Iran, and elsewhere in the Middle East, is the experience of spirits possessing the individual, with shouting, laughing, hitting head against a wall, singing or weeping. These hyperactive events may be followed by apathy or withdrawal, loss of interest in eating and usual life activities.
Current US internationalist politics and policies require much more interaction with individuals and tribes from other cultures, who exhibit many of these beliefs and behaviors. Larger immigrant populations in the US and US military and development personnel presence in war zones in these regions, influence more Americans than ever before. Being culturally very different, but involved in governmental reorganizations and the internal affairs of other cultures because of business interests vastly increases the risk of more spontaneous, irrational violence, in war zones or in development projects.
New immigrants to the US, some refugees from war-torn countries, and returning US soldiers, exhibit exotic symptoms and expand the social-welfare industry. Not only are there new psychiatric syndromes. There are increased requests for monthly disability checks from US governments and hiring preferences in a US economy already challenged by high unemployment.
Email mkrause381@gmail.com or mkrause54@yahoo.com to comment or request a copy of this or other blogs posted by mary for monthlynotesstaff on http://monthlynotes22.blogspot.com (http://monthlynotes.blogpsot.com through '22') on www.google.com. See http://monthlynotes18.blogspot.com or '19' for bloglist titles and URLs.
Reference: DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Ed. Allen Frances, MD, Chairperson, Robert L. Spitzer, MD, Special Advisor American Psychiatric Association, Washington, DC, 1994.
Graphic: An Original Photographic of "'Lucy the Elephant', on the Atlantic Beach, Near Atlantic City, NJ, 2003.', copyright, mkrause381gmail.com or mkrause54@yahoo.com.
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