A Transcultural Model of the Centrality of “Thinking a Lot” in Psychopathologies Across the Globe and the Process of Localization: A Cambodian Refugee Example

• Published in: Culture, medicine and psychiatry Vol. 40; no. 4; pp. 570 - 619
• Main Authors: Hinton, Devon E., Barlow, David H., Reis, Ria, de Jong, Joop
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.12.2016; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Anthropology; Anxiety; Asian culture; Cambodia; Cambodia - ethnology; Causality; Clinical Psychology; Cognition; Cultural factors; Culture; Emotional disorders; Ethnopsychology; Headaches; Humans; Illnesses; Insomnia; Localization; Medicine; Mental depression; Mental Disorders - ethnology; Migraine; Models, Psychological; Multiculturalism & pluralism; Ontology; Original Paper; Psychiatry; Psychological distress; Psychological Trauma - ethnology; Psychopathology; Public Health; Refugees; Refugees - psychology; Science; Social factors; Social Sciences; Sociocultural factors; Sociology; Spirit possession; Stress; Survivor; Symptoms; Thinking; Trauma; New York; United States > US; Netherlands; Thinking a lot; Rumination; Cross-cultural psychiatry; Idioms of distress; Cultural concepts of distress; Thinking too much

We present a general model of why “thinking a lot” is a key presentation of distress in many cultures and examine how “thinking a lot” plays out in the Cambodian cultural context. We argue that the complaint of “thinking a lot” indicates the presence of a certain causal network of psychopathology th...