Psychiatry and culture: Quantifying the contamination

Background and aims: Psychiatry has strong andcircular connections with culture and society, which arereflected in a continuous and progressive phenomenonof “contamination” of common language and colloquialexpressions. The analysis of this phenomenon mightprovide with significant elements for training and clinicalactivities. The aim of this work was to collect and analyzeexpressions in colloquial language originally derivedfrom psychiatric technical terminology.Methods: A hundred and ten fifth-year medical students(M/F% = 42/58; mean age = 23.5 ± 3.1) attending theirsemester in psychiatry were asked to list and discuss624 EACLPP Abstracts / Journal of Psychosomatic Research 68 (2010) 605–679as many words, phrases and expressions as possiblereferring to psychiatry and mental health. A semiqualitativeanalysis of the expressions collected wascarried out.Results: A list of 150 expressions was drawn andthen classified in the following 5 categories: technicalpsychiatric terms; medical-neurological terms; referencesto psychoanalysis; terms referring to abnormalityand need for care; not pertinent terms. Psychiatricexpressions, though usually exploited with pertinence,are used alternatively to define individual or others’states or conditions, with different intentions in the twocases, either as means for emphasis or ridiculisation.Conclusion: Due to fears and prejudices evoked bypsychiatric themes, an attempt on exorcising andtaking distance leads to the use of psychiatric terms aspotentially offensive and despising. This work suggeststhe need to work – especially in training settings – onfilling the gap between common and medical languagesand to analyze critically the contaminations as suggestiveof very relevant cultural issues