Suchergebnisse

A wide range of expressions describing feelings and emotions is identifiable in the indigenous Vietnamese literature. The majority of Vietnamese expressions for common emotional states appear to have semantic equivalents in western psychology. The present overview draws on the lay and medical literature to provide examples of such expressions and descriptions. There does not appear to be evidence of a comprehensive psychiatric typology in the Vietnamese medical literature, although it is unclear to what extent the framework of Chinese medicine has influenced Vietnamese practitioners. Traditional Vietnamese health-care services, including those for mental-health problems, are eclectic, deriving their principles from cosmology, metaphysics and supernatural belief systems inter alia. The holistic notion of physical and mental health based on the state of harmony of the individual within the cosmos may be incompatible with the reductionistic principles underlying western taxonomies. Thus, the extent to which indigenous concepts of mental-ill-health influence Vietnamese immigrants' choices about the utilization of either traditional or mainstream mental-health services in western countries needs further investigation.

This article describes the development and validation of the Phan Vietnamese Psychiatric Scale (PVPS). The PVPS was derived from Vietnamese idioms and cultural understandings of psychiatric and emotional distress identified from the Vietnamese literature and using ethnographic methods. The PVPS consists of a 26-item depression subscale, a 13-item anxiety subscale and a 14-item somatization subscale. Estimates of internal consistency for the three subscales ranged from .87 to .95, with 4-day interval test–retest reliability ranging from .81 to .89. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the subscale structure, with the depression subscale comprising two components 'general mood disturbance' and 'psychovegetative symptoms.' Multitrait–multimeasure analysis supported the construct validity of the scale. The PVPS demonstrated good criterion validity against case assignments by psychiatrists, naturalist healers, and structured diagnostic measures. The PVPS was rated as superior in clinical sensitivity and acceptability in comparison to other related measures.