Pobough Lang in Senegal

Autor: H. Collomb, Morton Beiser, J. L. Ravel, W. A. Burr
Rok vydání: 1974
Předmět:
Zdroj: Social Psychiatry. 9:123-129
ISSN: 1433-9285
0037-7813
DOI: 10.1007/bf00589178
Popis: A West African folk illness called Pobouh Lang, characterized by compulsive geophagia, pallor, weakness, edema, depression, anxiety, and social isolation, has been examined in cultural context and with reference to pertinent biological, ethnographic, and historical literature on geophagia. Some features of the illness are probably related to iron lack and other nutritional deficiencies, Other features are related to the ambiguous cultural definition of, and negative response to, the manifest behavior. — The determinants of the cultural response are unclear, but they may involve a relatively recent increase in the prevalence of the syndrome or unidentified features of the ethos that make it hard to assimilate geophagic habits. — In many cultures geophagia is accepted behavior with either medicinal, hedonistic or religious overtones. In such contexts the psychiatric elements of the syndrome seem not to occur, even where an element of malnutrition is present, as in the present day rural American South or during pregnancy among the Serer.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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