Culture and Mental Illness

Societal changes can have strong effects on rates of mental illness, but not always for the obvious reasons. Schizophrenia was considered rare in Algeria, a primarily Moslem country in North Africa, until Algeria gained independence from France in 1962. Over the next twenty-five years, the proportion of people with schizophrenia admitted to psychiatric hospitals more than doubled, rising from eighteen to forty percent of total admissions (Al-Issa, 1990). During the same time, poor rural farmers migrated to the cities, searching for jobs. Thousands of people were suddenly removed from the social support of their villages and from their extended families, who could help care for children and mentally ill relatives. In the villages, families had had no choice but to care for people with schizophrenia at home. As urban-dwellers, they were now living near large urban psychiatric hospitals for the first time. The stress of societal change undoubtedly made some Algerians' mental illness more severe. However, their families' isolation in large cities probably caused them to leave their homes and become psychiatric patients.