Rules And Norms Of Culture Essay

Introduction

Culture is defined as a ‘dynamic systems of rules, explicit and implicit, established by groups in order to ensure their survival, involving attitudes, values, beliefs, norms and behaviours shared by a group but harboured differently by each specific unit within the group, communicated across generations, relatively stable but with the potential to change across time’ (Matsumoto and Juang 2003).

This definition focuses on the fact that culture represents an average overall behaviour of a particular group or community but does not refer to individual discrepancies. Thus, though every individual interprets the rules and norms of culture differently, it is the collective common set of rules or norms that go on to form a part of culture.

But in case of mental illnesses, in majority of the cases, the doctor relies on a set of symptoms that point towards a particular illness and then bases his/her diagnosis based on a standard set of protocols prepared in this regard. These standards or protocols are based on past experiences with numerous case studies and accordingly treatment procedures are developed. But considering that every individual comes from a specific culture and every culture dictates certain behaviour, sets certain rules, approves a certain way of thinking, it is only natural that the manifestation of abnormal behaviour would also be different in different cultures. Moreover, what is considered normal or abnormal differs vastly from culture to culture. Hence what may be considered a serious mental disorder in one culture may be considered a normal thing in a different culture. Moreover, the etiology of mental disorders is also hugely culturally determined. Certain cultures are more predisposed to certain mental illnesses than others owing to the different set of values, beliefs, practices and therefore the different kinds of stressors they