A Comparison of Public Attitudes in Britain and Saudi Arabia Towards Auditory Hallucinations
Saheed Wahass and
Gerry Kent
Additional contact information
Saheed Wahass: Department of Psychiatry, King Fahd Hospital of King Faisal University, PO Box 40185, Al-Khobar 31952, Saudi Arabia
Gerry Kent: Kent, Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S 10 2TP, UK
International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 1997, vol. 43, issue 3, 175-183
Abstract:
Background. The successful introduction of community interventions is partly dependent on public beliefs about the aetiology and treatment of psychiatric difficulties and tolerance of community integration. Method. This study examined community attitudes towards auditory hallucinations in Saudi Arabia (SA) and the United Kingdom (UK) concerning (a) causes of auditory hallucinations, (b) the efficacy of interventions and (c) levels of social rejection. Results. Responses from 281 patients attending their general practitioners indicated that those living in Saudi Arabia were most likely to believe that hallucinations are caused by Satan or due to magic, while the UK sample were more likely to cite schizophrenia or brain damage. While the Saudi sample believed that religious assistance would be most effective, the UK sample supported medication and psychological therapies. Beliefs about aetiology and treatment were unrelated to educational attainment. There was a greater degree of social rejection of patients in Saudi Arabia, but here educational attainment was of significance. Conclusions. These results suggest that beliefs about aetiology are related to treatment recommendations and social distancing, and thus have implications for the care of Arabic patients living in Western countries as well as for the use of Western interventions in non- Western cultures.
Date: 1997
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002076409704300303 (text/html)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socpsy:v:43:y:1997:i:3:p:175-183
DOI: 10.1177/002076409704300303
Access Statistics for this article
More articles in International Journal of Social Psychiatry
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().