Chapter 7. Mental disorders: culture and society

Abstract

Thanks to the sequences presented, we have tried, in a lapidary way, to bring to life a new presentation of psychiatric facts in our society and the suffering and status of care and healing. Far from the hegemonic, self-sufficient trends or confirmation of identity, the analyses developed emphasise to what extent ignorance and confusion lead to deviance with the risk of a repetition of detention and socialisation. In passing they also underline the universality of psychopathological processes and the original modalities according to cultures and their mutations.
The problems raised in our country by mental disease are of topical interest. Beyond the fascination or fear that it inspires, and the many representations that public opinion has of psychiatry, it cannot be denied that mental disorders vie for one of the first places in the epidemiological register of medical pathologies in general. The reality composed of the development and mutations experienced in Algeria reveals important distortions in both social and individual psychopathology. Indeed, the development and the intention of the psychiatric fact offer a privileged testimony to the weight of the problems experienced by the individual within the family and social group, the process of change, the historical factors. Thus, the destiny of the psychiatrist is fundamentally linked to the destiny of society, witness of a human condition torn in culture conflicts that are constantly repeated by the sight of our patients.