7. North America

• Published in: Transcultural Psychiatric Research Review
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publications 1970
• Subjects: Canada; Indian; eskimo*; Metis
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/136346157000700120; https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/136346157000700120

J. E. JEFFRESS gives a succinct report of a survey on training facilities in trans cultural psychiatry presently offered in psychiatric residency programs in the United States. A. E. HIPPLER interprets the apparent swing from a "passive weak" to an "active dangerous" stereotype and posture of many young American Negroes. It would appear that the stable elements of these stereo typed responses are being preserved even while they seem to change on the surface. E. M. PATTISON, N. A. LAPINS, and H. A. DOERR report the construc tion of a personality and social profile of faith-healed members of various sects known to practice faith healing in the Seattle area. Many common psychological characteristics which they found are interpreted as the ego defense mechanisms of denial, externalization, and projection, whereas shared beliefs would serve as ego-integrative and sociointegrative systems adapted to particular subcultures. E. M. PATTISON and R. L. CASEY discuss some psycho logical interpretations of glossolalia derived from their studies of the psycho linguistic aspects of this phenomenon. The following papers are devoted to Canadian and American aboriginal groups. For the first time in Canada a mental health team headed by a psychiatrist visited ten Indian reserves in Saskatchewan for the purpose of finding active psychiatric cases. C. ROY reports on the data, which was compared with that obtained from the adjoining non-Indian communities. Statistical analysis revealed that the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in the Indian communities was significantly higher. Similar conclusions, although only partially supported by the material presen ted, are drawn by C. P. HELLON from psychiatric case histories of Indians, Metis, and Eskimos admitted to the Alberta Hospital, Oliver, as compared to a nonaboriginal control group. According to the author, personality disorders are more frequent in aborigines, and such factors as violence, promiscuity, and criminality correlate with crude measures of acculturation. In two papers ...