Culture and Panic Disorder

Book excerpt: Psychiatric classifications created in one culture may not be as universal as we assume, and it is difficult to determine the validity of a classification even in the culture in which it was created. Culture and Panic Disorder explores how the psychiatric classification of panic disorder first emerged, how medical theories of this disorder have shifted through time, and whether or not panic disorder can actually be diagnosed across cultures. In this breakthrough volume a distinguished group of medical and psychological anthropologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and historians of science provide ethnographic insights as they investigate the presentation and generation of panic disorder in various cultures. The first available work with a focus on the historical and cross-cultural aspects of panic disorders, this book presents a fresh opportunity to reevaluate Western theories of panic that were formerly taken for granted.