Context: The term ‘transcultural psychiatry’ has encompassed changing notions of race, culture and psychiatry and, as a result, it is a difficult concept to define. For a long time psychiatrists and social scientists have been commenting on how the psyches and psychiatric illnesses differ in non-White populations. However, transcultural psychiatry was not created as a distinct discipline until after World War II.
Objective: This article will attempt to tell the story of transcultural psychiatry, charting its genesis in the aftermath of World War II and aim to uncover the nature of the discipline.
Key messages: Transcultural psychiatry has taken different forms in response to developments within psychiatry and wider sociocultural changes. In doing so it has become a complex and multi-faceted discipline with multiple meanings.
Conclusion: Transcultural psychiatry has a number of meanings. Firstly, it is to some biological psychiatrists the attempt to apply modern Western concepts of disease to non-Western civilizations. Secondly, it is the approach espoused by Kleinman, an anthropological or cultural psychiatry, which advocates understanding illness in terms of the local cultures. Thirdly, it is a form of psychiatry which is related to the concept of racism and the rights of ethnic minorities. Finally, it is also a form of practice, a practice that in some senses fuses all the above.
