Flying over the cuckoo’s nest can vary radically from culture to culture and after reading a very interesting NY Times article: The Americanization of Mental Illness, I wanted to find out more about some very particular culture-bound syndromes mentioned, most of which were unbeknownst to me. Killing rampages, fear that genitals are retracting, spirits taking over the body… here are some notable cultural illnesses that step outside the Western medical box and can only be understood, “understanding the ideas, habits and predispositions of the mind that is its host”.
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