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Identifying and Managing Problems in Different Settings
Published in Philipa A Brough, Margaret Denman, Introduction to Psychosexual Medicine, 2019
Some cultures and religions have fixed rules surrounding sexual intercourse. In most religions this is banned until after marriage. Some religions, such as Roman Catholicism, restrict the use of contraception and abortion. Orthodox Jews are supposed to avoid intercourse during menstruation or any other type of vaginal bleeding and for seven days following this. A cleansing ceremony or mikva is then performed. Many Muslim groups also ban sexual intercourse when there is bleeding. (This must be borne in mind when suggesting contraceptive measures that may cause irregular bleeding.) HCPs working with Southeast Asian men may come across the Dhat syndrome where loss of energy, weakness and anxiety may be attributed to loss of semen by nocturnal emission or masturbation. In fact, many religions ban masturbation. Homosexuality is also taboo in many cultures and is still illegal in many parts of the world.
Mental health in India II
Published in Dinesh Bhugra, Samson Tse, Roger Ng, Nori Takei, Routledge Handbook of Psychiatry in Asia, 2015
Sydney Moirangthem, Geetha Desai, Santosh K. Chaturvedi
In females, Dhat syndrome is not reported as commonly as in males. Nevertheless, female Dhat syndrome does present in clinical settings. In clinical practice, in gynecological, medical and psychiatric clinics, women frequently attribute their physical symptoms (vague aches and pains, dysuria, asthenia) to their passing of a white discharge per vagina (WDPV). Ujla (whiteness), SwetaPradara (white discharge), safedpaani (white water) and bilihoguvudu (white going) are some common terms by which the passing of WDPV is referred to by women. Most often, the reasons given were things like dietary factors, excess of heat (or cold) in the body, emotional factors/stress, activity of any nature and tubectomy.45
Neurasthenia: tracing the journey of a protean malady
Published in International Review of Psychiatry, 2020
Poornima Bhola, Santosh K. Chaturvedi
These shifts and reappearances and the lack of universality led Köhne (2019) to speculate if neurasthenia was an ‘imaginary disorder’. Neurasthenia seems have survived these fluctuating fortunes and demonstrated its relevance in Asian cultures (Schwartz, 2002); as shenjing shuaruo in China (Wang, 2016), shinkeisuijaku in Japan (Machizawa, 1992), sin gyeong soe yak in North Korea (Kim, 2015) suy nh ược th ần kinh in Vietnam (Monnais, 2012; Tran, 2017) and ashaktapanna in India (Tam, 2014). Nerve weakness and fatigue remained at the core, despite the variations in terminologies and cultural meanings and adaptations. In the Indian subcontinent, these were subsumed under the terms ‘dhat’ syndrome in men, and female ‘dhat’ syndrome among women, if the weakness was related to reproductive systems, as described above.