Salute mentale, benessere soggettivo e cultura

he current paper highlights the relationships and binding net between mental health and culture. As starting point it has been assumed that culture has a double (internal and external) nature, so that the traditional dichotomy between emic and etic perspective may be overcome. Culture is everywhere, inside the mind (subjective side) and outside the mind (objective side). Within such framework the paper deepens the �mental health� concept, beginning from the ideology of the so-called �mental illness� and from the psychiatric ethnocentrism. DSM-IV may be considered as an evident cue of such ethnocentrism. The cultural perspective of mental disorders underlines that specific and distinctive cultural syndromes characterize different forms of psychological disease in different cultures like the amok, the shenjing shuairuo, the koro and so on. Likewise, such cultural perspective draws attention to the different value and meaning of traditional mental disorders as depression, schizophrenia, anxiety and the like. In order to overcome the clinic ethnocentrism it seems necessary that psychologists should control the systematic biases generated by culture referring to tests employment and diagnostic procedure carried out in the Western psychology. Such attention involves the respect of precise rules of cultural equivalence as well. In the same vein psychotherapy is deeply affected by culture: the word therapy prevailing in the Western society is diametrically opposed to the action therapy preponderating in the Eastern one. These aspects imply the opportunity for a cross-cultural clinical training for social professionals. An equivalent intertwining between psychological resources and culture may be found also for the subjective well-being. The American way to happiness is distinguished by optimism, positive emotions, self-esteem, self-efficacy in order to gain the maximum of positive life. Conversely, the Japanese way to happiness is grounded on harmony, balance between yin and yang, group dominance, self-critical attitude and identity flexibility. Finally, the psychological implications of this cultural perspective are discussed