The bird dancer and the warrior king: Divergent lived experiences of Tourette syndrome in Bali.

In the past two decades, ethnographic, epidemiological and interdisciplinary research has robustly established that culture is significant in determining the long-term outcomes of people with neurodevelopmental, neuropsychiatric and mood disorders. Yet these cultural factors are certainly not uniform across discrete individual experiences. Thus, in addition to illustrating meaningful differences for people with neuropsychiatric disorder between different cultures, ethnography should also help detail the variations within a culture.

Traditional healing and its discontents: efficacy and traditional therapies of neuropsychiatric disorders in Bali.

In a discussion of patients suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and/or Tourettes's Syndrome (TS), in Bali, Indonesia, traditional healing and psychiatric perspectives are used to highlight the power and weakness of each to treat these conditions. Given they are drawn from the same culture, should not indigenous explanatory models provide meaning and be more efficacious at relieving the suffering of people with OCD and TS-like symptoms? What if they provide an understandable meaning for patients but these meanings have no efficacy? Ethnographic data on Balinese models for illness are presented. Multiple data sources were used to frame the complex Balinese traditional healing systems.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder in Bali: the cultural shaping of a neuropsychiatric disorder.

Many psychiatric researchers believe that the clinical picture of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) shows little variability cross-culturally. This study examined the symptomatology and illness experience of 19 patients suffering from OCD in Bali, Indonesia. Patients were assessed using a semi-structured clinical interview.