In the field of transcultural mental health the Internet must be the most fertile medium for rooting and nourishing the growing world-wide links between ideas, perspectives, research and practices.
The discipline of transcultural psychiatry and mental health has matured a great deal in recent decades.When we are still little we see our parents to be the most wonderful beings on earth. With maturation of understanding we realise that as we saw our parents to be the best , others must have seen the same as regards their own parents. Such a maturation and growth brings the ability to see things from other's perspectives and in fact from different perspectives. It helps the development of respect for the perspective of difference.
A degree of maturation in transcultural psychiatry has brought with it an ability to let go of its imperialistic preoccupations with others as primitive, bizarre or exotic in the form of descriptions of 'culture bound syndromes' and production of comparative data based upon eurocentric ways of psychometric or phenomenological measurements. Now there seems to be a growing recognition of the need for a more intimate comprehension of the cultural context in which mental phenomena manifest. There is also a growing awareness of the value of culturally congruent therapeutic interventions.
Rapid communications, mass media, travel and migrations are enabling most societies of this global village to be truly pluralistic. The ideas and practices originating in one place can easily take root in another with varying degrees of transformation and adaptations.
As cultures differ in their age, they also differ in their lengths of time they have already had for understanding and evolving their relationships with their minds. Thus there are enormous differences between the cultures that have recently emerged and those that are thousands of years old as regards their attitude towards such fundamental mental health issues as individuation, separation, self, autonomy, narcissism and so on. These understandings offer fascinating materials for learning the way forward for the better and better mental health of our global village.
Thus this section of Psychiatry On-Line offers an exciting opportunity to all of us to contribute to this cause by facilitating a truly international exchange of ideas and practices along with the opportunity for multiple perspectives so essential for the growth of this discipline.
I am sure this opportunity will be fully made use of by all
interested readers, contributors, researchers, reviewers and critics. Currently the
journal is aiming at creating following sections:
We are also open to suggestions for other useful sections and look forward to your contributions for any of the sections above.
Kedar Dwivedi
26.5.1996
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