Abstract

Mood disorders are observed worldwide and represent a major contribution to the global burden of disease. Despite the numerous ways in which these disorders vary across cultural contexts, however, the research literature is dominated by Western concepts. Cultural variations, and the ways in which they can best be understood and studied, comprise the focus of this chapter.

We begin with a brief historical overview of disordered mood over different eras. Then, we turn to the contemporary literature on cultural variations in mood disorders, focusing on four domains: (1) etiological beliefs; (2) risk and resilience; (3) incidence and prevalence; and (4) symptom presentation. While many of the studies reviewed highlight intriguing differences across cultural groups, relatively few of them explore empirically the possible explanations for these differences. We thus propose an approach to understanding cultural variations in psychopathology based on a core idea from cultural psychology: the mutual constitution of culture, mind, and brain. Then, we briefly describe some of the ways in which symptoms of disordered mood can be understood as emerging from looping processes in the culture-mind-brain system. From this perspective, we conclude by looking ahead to some future directions for research. First, we emphasize the importance of integrative studies across culture-, mind-, and brain-levels. Second, we consider the possibility that historical changes in descriptions of disordered mood might go beyond shifts in our understanding to include culturally-shaped transformations in normal and abnormal experience.