Abstract
People’s lived experiences of distress are complex, personal, and vary widely across cultures. So, too, do the terms and expressions people use to describe distress. This variation presents an engaging challenge for those doing intercultural work in transcultural psychiatry, global mental health, and psychological anthropology. This article details the findings of a study of common distress terminology among 63 Kannada-speaking Hindu women living in Mysuru, the second largest city in the state of Karnataka, South India. Very little existing scholarship focuses on cultural adaptation for speakers of Dravidian languages like Kannada; this study aims to fill this gap and support greater representation of this linguistic family in research on mental health, idioms of distress, and distress terminology. Between 2018 and 2019, we conducted a 3-phase study consisting of interviews, data reduction, and focus group discussions. The goal was to produce a non-exhaustive list of common Kannada distress terms that could be used in future research and practice to translate and culturally adapt mental health symptom scales or other global mental health tools.
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Notes
British and American English are the two most common sources of English words in Indian languages; the former due to colonialism and its legacies, and the latter largely due to media-driven globalization.
There are many situations in which possession is a positively valued state, as in certain temple settings or during particular rituals. In these conversations, women were referring to the more negative versions of possession.
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Weaver, L.J., Nanjaiah, S., Begum, F. et al. A Glossary of Distress Expressions Among Kannada-Speaking Urban Hindu Women. Cult Med Psychiatry (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-023-09843-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-023-09843-3