[philwelch]

The social sciences have a term—“WEIRD” (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) to describe the population that most psychological and social science research has studied the most deeply. As the acronym implies, these populations are not normal across human history or even the modern world.

One of the fascinating concepts in abnormal psychology is the notion of a “culture-bound syndrome”—a mental illness that only occurs in a specific cultural milieu. I wonder how many mental illnesses are actually culture-bound syndromes of WEIRD culture?