Dissociative Amnesia with Fugue vs. Shenjing Shuairuo: A Clinical Case Report. Are DSM-5 Distress Cultural Considerations Truly Transcultural Relevant?

Abstract

Introduction

We present the case report of a 21-year-old Chinese female, who was brought to the emergency department. We open the debate between the operative criteria stablished by DSM-5 of the clinical entity dissociative amnesia and Shenjing Shuairuo - the Chinese “culture-bound syndrome”.

Objectives

To expose the relevance of the cultural formulation in the clinical evaluation of patients with a different non-Western culture in Psychiatry.

Aims

The Shenjing Shuairuo syndrome (“nervous system weakness”) was originally descripted in China, it has a gradual onset, usually after a stressful event. It involves a minimum 3 of 5 symptoms group: weakness, emotions, excitement, neurological pain and sleep. This complex group of symptoms overlap with dissociative syndrome such as dissociative amnesia.

Methods/results

The cultural formulation interview (CFI) was used for the diagnostic and subsequent treatment of dissociative amnesia with fugue in a different culture patient who met the clinical criteria of this two divergent clinic entities.

Conclusions

In our clinical practice, we will deal with different culture patients, who could present common clinical entities or with the so-called “culture-bound syndromes”. The cultural formulation of the clinical cases will help the clinicians to diagnose and have better treatment's options in clinical manifestations do not correspond to the conventional entities included in mostly Western-based nomenclatures.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.