The study of disease in relation to culture

In this paper, frameworks for conceptualizing the term disease are first reviewed and compared. Then, problems inherent in traditional approaches to evaluating psychiatric illness in settings where Western medicine has had little or no impact are discussed. In particular, conceptual issues stemming from contrasting medical orientations and from adopting a dualistic approach to illness are reviewed and related. Peculiar difficulties of analyzing psychological data are given some focus. The link between biomedicine, ethnomedicine, and psychiatric illness is systematically probed. The paper concludes by outlining a frame of reference that may be followed in studying health and illness cross-culturally. It is felt that such a perspective may minimize the theoretical problems discussed in the substance of the paper.