[Symposium 104] Culture and Delusions

[SY-104] Culture and Delusions

Goffredo Bartocci^1,2,9, Toshiya Murai⁶, Tsutomu Kumazaki⁵, Micol Ascoli^3,4,12,11, Senkei Ueno⁶, donato zupin^7,10,8,12 (1.Italian Institute of Transcultural Mental Health, Co-Founder and Past President(Italy), 2.World Association of Cultural Psychiatry, Co-Founder and Past President(Italy), 3.Central and North West London Foundation Trust(UK), 4.Mental Health Department Head, Beijing United Family Hospital(China), 5.Toranomon Hospital(Japan), 6.Department of Psychiatry, Kyoto University(Japan), 7.DDSM, Mental Health Area, ASUGI - WHO Collaborative Center, Trieste(Italy), 8.Transcultural Psychiatry Section, Italian Society of Psychiatry. Chair(Italy), 9.Transcultural Psychiatry Section, Italian Society of Psychiatry, Co-Founder and Past President(Italy), 10.World Association of Cultural Psychiatry, Board of Directors. Advisor(Italy), 11.Transcultural Psychiatry Section, Italian Society of Psychiatry. Board of Directors(Italy), 12.Italian Institute of Transcultural Mental Health, Board of Directors(Italy))

Keywords:

cultural psychiatry,delusions,epistemology

Delusion is a cornerstone of psychiatric diagnosis, representing a hallmark for diagnosing schizophrenia and other psychoses as well as affective disorders with psychotic symptoms. This psychiatric symptoms could be identified in a variety of mental health conditions. Clinicians are increasingly confronted with a proliferation of beliefs that are harmful for the subject and his community and presents subjective certainty, incorrigibility, and non verifiable contents. This does not limits to the bizarre beliefs of schizophrenia, but includes a variety of conspiracy theories, fundamentalists religious beliefs and racist assumptions, culturally and sub culturally shared. These findings raise the questions of exploring the boundaries between healthy and pathological beliefs, and challenge the notion that delusions are limited to individual beliefs. The symposium explore the exceptional clinical, anthropological and philosophical issue raised by the definition of delusion. The history of the concept of delusions will be reviewed, alongside with its links with different psychiatric perspectives and its implications for the epistemology of knowledge, beliefs and error. Cultural delusions will be proposed as a useful clinical tool to be used in addition to the traditional clinical concept of individual delusions. Socio-cultural dynamics leading to cultural delusions will be examined, and its implication for psychotherapy will be illustrated.