Anxiety and Culture

The intersection between anxiety and culture, which forms the subject of this chapter, has been approached using various theoretical frameworks. This chapter outlines a clinical approach, which emphasizes the universality of biomedical disorders, and an anthropological approach, which emphasizes that the expression and experience of illness differs from time to time and place to place. It is argued that an integrated approach, which combines the strengths of the clinical and anthropological approaches, recognizing both disease mechanisms and illness experiences, is possible. An integrated approach proves useful not only in conceptualizing cross-cultural data on anxiety disorders, but also in everyday clinical practice.