Dissociative memory disturbances characterize dissociative disorders (such as dissociative amnesia, dissociative fugue, dissociative identity disorder, Ganser syndrome) and certain anxiety disorders (post-traumatic stress disorder). Across various cultures, they are recognized to be precipitated by psychological stress. In immigrant populations, stressful experiences arising during migration and acculturation could lead to somatic and psychiatric symptoms (including dissociative ones). A delayed onset of these symptoms - that at times occurs - may reflect a kindling sensitization or an incubation effect.

Postnatal depression affects about 10% -20% of women after childbirth (Miller 2002).The duration of the postnatal depression could be six months or more in 25% -50% of cases (Beck 2002). The prevalence was mainly established from studies in western developed countries. In the studies carried out in Asian countries it has been found a much wider range of prevalence, from 1% to about 20% (Leung, 2002). Some researchers have found that the low prevalence of postnatal depression in some countries may be due to some protection factors from the local culture (Fitch 2002, Harkness 1987, Miller 2002). The research on the impact of cultural factors on the onset of postnatal depression therefore presents a wide range of conclusions. We want explore the link between culture, risk factors and postnatal depression: this issue appears to be one of the future goals of research in the field, given the important role that culture can play in people's lives (Cox 1999; Kirmayer 1989, Lazarus & Folkman 1984; Raphael -Leff 1991). The results of some studies carried out in several countries around the world have shown that the prevalence of postnatal depression is relatively similar across different cultures and different types of ethnic communities (Cox 1999; Danach et al. 2002; Ghubash & Abu-Saleh, 1997). On the other hand, some studies have shown that in the cultures with a strong social support for new mothers, the prevalence of postnatal depression is lower (Fitch 2002; Miller 2002).

Two fundamental aspects of cultural intuitive conceptions of time's passage - cyclic and continuous temporality - are here related to clinical psychopathology of post-traumatic stress in Brazil. People with predominantly cyclical cultural perceptions of time tend to see life and death as part of an eternal movement. Severity and persistence of mental trauma are not directly related to the magnitude of the catastrophe or even of the traumatic experience, but rather to the way they pervade the mind and to the roles they represent on it. Modern culture tends to produce individuals prepared to a highly complex world, running in a frantic rhythm and under constant pressure. Nearly all events must be anticipated, planned or controlled, and obsessive traits tend to be facilitated. However, in catastrophic, unpredictable events, when nothing can be done, these full-schedule people may show frailty and despair.

In our clinical experience, traditional communities seem capable to bear extremely high levels of aggression or suffering - in traumatic and catastrophic situations - without showing proportional signs of mental stress. While in the high social layers of modern communities an act of violence as an assault or rape may have serious and long lasting consequences, in everyday public hospital practice we come across victims of potentially traumatic events without any of the expected devastating effects on their mental life. Periodic dissociative rituals may have a role in their resilience.

With respect to mental health disorders, there are cultural and migration-related differences in the personal experience and the way of dealing with them. However, the association between migration experiences and the development and the continuation of mental health disorders respectively, remain unclear. Epidemiological studies on mental health disorders of migrants rarely exist, even though such information is decisive for the appropriate medical care of this target group. We therefore conducted a cross-sectional survey regarding mental health of immigrants in Germany attending in non-health specific counseling agencies of welfare associations. Besides somatization symptoms (Beschwerdeliste (BL)) and symptoms of mental disorders (depression: patients’ health questionnaire (PHQ-D); anxiety: GAD-7; hazardous alcohol consumption: AUDIT), data on the social and occupational situation, as well as on the migration background was acquired. Data of n= 506 immigrants (55.5% female) were analyzed (age: 54.7 ± 12.4). The immigrants stems from the states of the former Soviet Union (n= 196), Turkey (n= 77), Italy (n= 95) and Spain (n= 67). Overall, 27.1% show evidence for a somatization disorder, 15.8% for a depressive disorder and 23.1% for increased anxiety (GAD-7 ≥ 5). 16.0% of the respondents show evidence of hazardous alcohol consumption. The study provides empirically profound information about the mental health of immigrants, who attend non-health specific counseling agencies. The analysis, subject to the migration status and socio-demographic factors, allows the development of measures of the enhancement of health care for this group regarding mental health.

The aim of the main study is to examine the influence of risk factors and protecting factors that help elicit or alleviate mental health issues. An epidemiological cross-sectional data collection approach will be employed for this purpose, and the main outcome variable will be mental health as assessed with the General Health Questionnaire. We will recruit 340 German women and 340 Turkish migrant women. Constructs such as general self-efficacy, social support and extraversion depict protective factors and constructs such as social strain and neuroticism are considered as risk factors in this regard. Furthermore, the coherence between various acculturation patterns will be explored in order to be able to examine the presence of psychiatric symptoms more precisely.

We will present the first results of the pilot study by 50 Turkish migrant women to review the reliability and validity of the used instruments and to evaluate the hypotheses and experimental design.

Two fundamental aspects of cultural intuititive conceptions of time's passage - cyclic and continuous temporality - are here related to medical therapy and psychopathology, in a critical view of depression in old age as a modern construct. Although inspired by anthropological perspectives this paper is based on daily clinical experience and on a phenomenological attitude. In predominantly cyclical cultural perceptions of time the process of ageing is part of an eternal movement, and families perpetuate themselves in their descendants, in their traditions, in land ties or in the practice of familiar crafts or skills. Cultural transformations that give rise to more directional approaches of time's passage tend to implement individual roles more and more in social history. The more difficult the change from fatalist, repetitive, eternal cycling traditional Weltanschauungen to individualizing, bureaucratizing, planning and successive ones, the larger the chances of an unsuccessful old age and medicalisation of this failure.

The Informational models of the levels of the psychic constitute a methodology of access to the scientific research and understanding. In this system are accepted two types of thinking: mystical-religious and pragmatic-scientific. This two models of thinking are totally different as mechanism but them presence is strict necessary for the reliability of the behavior. It doesn’t exist any scientific argument that can modify the religious beliefs determined by revelation, education, and formation. The scientific knowledge cannot be religious motivated. Both systems are necessary for the normality and unfortunately them mixture in some kinds of hybrids of knowledge do not add a value of efficiency or utility.

Correctly, we can talk about a typology of personality culturally determined. Or, every culture is based on some religious myth and beliefs.

Extraordinary is the observation that the real men of science and of culture are religious, belong to a religion and the atheism is specific to the educational and formational lack.

It is interesting how some deviations that lead to fanatics and are in contradiction with the religious principles specific to the populations lead to disharmonic structures and aberrant behavior (see terrorism, see the roots of xenophobia)

The paperwork is a debate on large of the forming of the personality from the cultural anthropological point of view with an informational approach of the game of significations.

The approach of the psychic can be done from the scientific incidence or from the religious incidence. Unfortunately in the last decades, exists more and more a mixture between different and even multiple religious models and scientific elements. Or, it have to be understood that the religious model is based on revelation and faith and is an element belonging to the culture and to the cultural dimensions of the different population groups, with a very important determinism over the behavioral models. These religious models cannot be confused and also cannot be put in antithesis with the models of scientific knowledge, which are based on experiment, repeatability and logical argumentation. Or, right such a scientific model evolve in time, making optimized approximations, beginning from the material support of the neuro-psychical functions to the informational processes. The piece of information itself has levels of different complexity, beginning from the statistic level, semantic level, Gnostic level and heuristic level, the last being specifically human. The role of the speech and of the reflected thinking becomes not only an argument of the human thinking for psychiatrists and psychologists but also an argument of the apparition of human being for anthropologists. This kind of approach, of strict scientific informational modeling has to counteract the circulating pseudo-models with positive and negative energies, which cannot be scientific defined. We highlight that it doesn’t exist any contradiction between our religious beliefs and our scientific knowledge, being totally different and disjunctive fields, which can not get in reciprocal contradiction.

Studies demonstrate that suicidality in female Turkish immigrants in some European countries is higher compared to native-born women of the same age. This indicates a demand for a better understanding of suicide in this group of the society, and, based on such knowledge, specific concepts for prevention. Embedded in the development of a suicide prevention campaign for women of Turkish origin in Berlin, Germany, we assessed explanatory models of suicidal behavior using a qualitative approach. Specifically, we employed focus group discussions with Turkish experts as well as focus group discussions with Turkish women from the community. Groups were stratified by age (age range 18-34, 35-49, and 50+) in order to account for age effects and effects of migration generation. Results show differential conceptions of suicidal crises, the patterns of distress, the perceived causes, and the preferences for help-seeking and treatment as a function of age group and expertise. Based upon these results, we provide a framework for explanatory models of suicidal crisis behavior that are specific for women with a Turkish migratory background in Germany.

Author intends to explicate dreaming brain and mind interactions by interpreting the neurophenomenology of dreaming brain as well as by analyzing the narratives of collected dream data. The author articulates acculturative dreaming mind by demonstrating two empirical research outcomes and suggests some analogical connections between dreaming brain and acculturative dreaming mind.

The author explored an acculturative dreaming model by analyzing dream data that show an unconscious self-adaptation or acculturative self-process. The author designed “Lee Acculturation Dream Scale” (Lee, Sang Bok, 2005: Psychological Reports, 96, 454-456) to analyze the location of each dream by evaluating the dream content. A two-sample t test on the mean score of the “Lee Acculturation Dream Scale” indicated significant difference between men and women (Lee, 2005).

In terms of domain-specific dreaming mind the author analyzed the dreamers’ anxiety level by evaluating the dream content. A sample t test on the “Lee Cross-cultural Anxiety Dream Scale”(Lee, Sang Bok, 2008) means showed significant difference between the two groups(p< 0.001): Korean college students group (N=93, M=1.7, SD=1.2) and Korean-American college student group (N=165, M=2.3, SD=1.5). In this study, Korean American college students, who were experiencing cross-cultural life situation and under acculturation process in the USA, showed more anxiety in their dream contents than Korean college students.

Dreaming brain and mind need to be recapitulated as having inherently acculturative function regardless of cultural origins, value or life-style difference.

A country often referred to as the giant of Africa up till now lacks a legal limit of blood alcohol concentration (BAC). South Africa and Zimbabwe are the few African countries that have determined their BAC level. On the average in Nigerian roads approximately 50% of accidents are related to alcohol use. This problem is largely due to the inadequate, as well as absence of regulatory guidelines on blood alcohol concentration. For decades, the problem of deciding the limit to which blood alcohol concentration must not be exceeded to avoid legal offence has been a major issue in this country. There is evidence that lowering the permitted limit of which BAC must not be exceeded to avoid legal offences to a great extent reduces the risk of alcohol involvements. The Road Traffic Act, Federal, Highway Act, and the Federal Road Safety, Commission Decree which are legislations that presently apply to Federal highways does not state the specific legal limit of intoxication. Most countries have set their BAC limit at 0.2-.8 mg/ml level. As a result of the high rate alcohol associated accidents in Nigeria, and to prevent human right abuse, it is of urgency to determine a BAC legal limit. Nigerian scientists, the Federal Road Safety Commission must step up research activities, awareness programs/campaign to reduce various incidences of illegal alcohol intoxication.

This study reviews recent data on the rate of alcohol use and related problems in the general population in Belarus. In recent times the rate of alcohol use and related problems like liver diseases, psychoses, etc are on a significant increase. It has been suggested that the increase in the rate of problems associated with alcohol use in this country is partly due to the behavioral peculiarities of young and middle adults. Current epidemiological data show that over 90% of the young and middle adult population use alcohol. The data of the adult population is rather contradictory. Some surveys show a greater proportion of the adults (age >50 yrs) population engaged in drinking, compared to the young and middle adults. Others show lower prevalence. Our analysis shows that, although alcohol use in significantly high in the adult population, it is still lower compared to the young and middle adults. Problems of alcohol use are also lower among the adults by a significant margin. These differences might be due to the peculiarities of socialization, as well as neurobiological mechanisms underlying age-related changes with alcohol use in the different population groups.