CLINICAL AND CULTURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF OCD IN EASTERN SAUDI ARABIA

Abstract

It is both difficult and unwise to dissociate psychiatry from its socio­ cultural context. Obsessive compulsive disorder as other psychiatric disorders should be understood and approached in the light of socio­ cultural background, which colors its presentation, understanding and management.

Culture and religion may play a role in OCD, as a medium that partly determines how, though not necessarily whether, symptoms are expressed. The clinical presentation and symptom profiles of OCD may differ from one culture to another. Socio-cultural factors are believed to lay their reflections on . the clinical presentation, content of symptoms, perception and recognition of the disorder, as weli as on its outcome and prognosis.

The Saudi culture has its special pattern of social conditions, style of education, degree of urbanization and industrialization, and above all the pattern of religious and cultural beliefs, practices and traditions together with a certain degree of openness to foreign cultures.. Though sharing many common features with other Arab and Muslim cultures, particularly the dominant role of religion in life, the reserved nature of people, the importance and value attached to marriage and marital life and the socio­ culturally sanctioned strict gender roles with the reserved, mostly indoor, life of women. However, the Saudi society is specially characterized by a most prominent leading role oflslam as a religion of life. People are more