Cross-Cultural Analysis of Dependent Personality Disorder

Dependent personality disorder (DPD), according to the DSM V, is a personality disorder where the person is excessively reliant on others, characterized by clingy and submissive behavior (American Psychiatric Association , 2013). In order to properly assess the cultural implications of DPD, it is important to factor in how psychological knowledge is influenced by history, events, organizations, financial and ideopolitical interests (Laureate online education, 2016).

According to the sociologist Chris Jenks, culture is the collection of behaviors, customs, norms and values of a particular group of people or society. Culture is also a fluid concept where it influences individuals through cultural products such as books, media, songs etc. and is influenced by individuals, in particular those who produce cultural products.

Psychological knowledge, which is centered on cognition and behavior, can’t be detached from cultural imperatives (Jenks, 2005). This paired with the fact that psychology as a discipline was developed mostly in western societies, most notably Europe and the United States (Twenge & Campbell, 2017), resulted in a lot of psychological concepts which lacked in universality and reflected those cultures.

The DSM V which is a product of the American Psychiatric Association is no exception; it was developed in the United stated, by mostly white/male American psychologists (Laureate online education, 2016), to deal with psychological ailments of American individuals (Laureate online education, 2016).

What is normal is that which adheres to the norm, which is a cultural concept (Laureate online education, 2016). Geert Hofstede, developed what is called the Hofstede cultural dimensions by studying cultural norms (Hofstede Insights, 2018). One of the dimensions that were studied were individualism vs collectivism and according to Hofstede’s research, the United States and a majority of European countries ranked high in individualism, whereas a lot of middle eastern and east Asian societies ranked high in collectivism (Hofstede Insights, 2018).

A lot of DPD’s attributes that revolve around the notion of being submissive and dependent on others (American Psychiatric Association , 2013) are bound to the individualistic orientation of American society (Chen, Nettles, & Chen, 2009). On the other hand, collectivistic countries, and most notably East Asian ones have a much higher threshold of dependability, and it is actually required of individuals in those cultures to be very collaborative, at even submissive at times (Chen, Nettles, & Chen, 2009).

DPD’s culture specific attributes do not invalidate the disorder, especially when it comes to the United States (Chen, Nettles, & Chen, 2009); however, it mounts the pressure to be more critical of the emphasis on biological and heritable aspects of psychological and psychiatric diagnoses, which is a recurring theme in the DSM (Laureate online education, 2016).

Moreover, DPD’s weak cross-cultural validity (Chen, Nettles, & Chen, 2009) is a strong indication of the need for the development of culture-sensitive approaches, especially when it comes to psychological diagnoses (Laureate online education, 2016), moving away from the biomedical model in psychology and nearer to the biopsychosocial model, which is more comprehensive (Laureate online education, 2016).

References

American Psychiatric Association . (2013). Dependant personality disorder. In Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th Edition (pp. 675-678). Washington: American Psychiatric Association .

Chen, Y., Nettles, M., & Chen, S. (2009). Rethinking dependant personality disorder: comparing different human relatedness in cultural contexts. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease , 197(11):793-800.

Hofstede Insights. (2018). National Culture. Retrieved September 10, 2018, from Hofstede Insights: https://www.hofstede-insights.com/models/national-culture/

Jenks, C. (2005). Culture 2nd edition. London: Routledge.

Laureate online education. (2016, December 20). The social and cultural construction of psychology. part 1. the cultural definition of normality. Mind, Brain and Behavior. Netherlands: Laureate Online Education B.V.

Laureate online education. (2016, November 10). The social and cultural construction of psychology. part 1. the social construction of psychological knowledge. Mind, Brain and Behavior. Netherlands: Laureate Online Education B.V.

Laureate online education. (2016, November 28). The social and cultural construction of psychology. part 2. cross cultural psychology. Mind, Brain and Behavior. Netherlands: Laureate Online Education B.V.

Laureate online education. (2016, December 20). The social and cultural construction of psychology. part 2. culture-sensitive approaches in psychology. Mind, Brain and Behavior. Letherlands: Laureate Online Education B.V.

Laureate online education. (2016, Nevember 10). Week 7: the biopsychosocial perspective. systems, holism and reductionism. Mind, Brain and Behavior. Netherlands: Laureate Online Education B.V.

Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2017). Culture and personality. In Personality Psychology (pp. 297-321). New York: Pearson.

Water, T. V., Suliman, S., & Seedat, S. (2016). Gender and cultural issues in psychiatric nosological classification systems. Cambridge University Press, 334-340.