Therapy is for Westerners: Inadequacies Assessing & Understanding Bangladeshi Anxiety & Depression

Abstract

The very-few studies investigating mental health in Bangladesh find it to have above-average prevalence of psychological disorders including anxiety and depression. In addition, Bangladeshis exhibit low help-seeking behaviour for mental health. Awareness of psychological disorders is low in the country; many don’t recognise them as health issues, or attribute them to factors outside their control (e.g., God’s will). The current study investigates anxiety and depression in Bangladesh. Firstly, it uses globally-used, Western-made tools to assess anxiety and depression in Bangladesh. Secondly, it uses an original Multicomponent Stress Survey to gauge stress across different internal and external sociocultural factors (designed around Bangladeshi mental health literature). Thirdly, it evaluates the reliability of these Western tools for participants in Bangladesh. Results show significantly higher prevalence of anxiety and depression amongst participants in Bangladesh compared to an American control group. Bangladeshi participants reported more stress on nearly every factor of the Multicomponent Stress Survey, but these reports did not correlate with Bangladeshi mental health whereas they did with Americans. Bangladeshis who do seek professional mental health help are treated with tools developed in the West to measure symptoms like anxiety or depression. Bangladeshis never helped found these tools, so they reflect Western-centric symptomatic expression. Both measures for anxiety and depression were statistically unreliable for Bangladeshi participants but not Americans. Through a lens of cultural relativism versus universalism, the author argues for improved cross-cultural mental health measures, to better assess (and thus start to address) mental health in non-Western countries like Bangladesh.