And now for a little anthropology: culture-bound syndromes, stress, and work

Medical anthropology has a concept called the 'culture-bound syndrome' to describe a health disorder that is particular to one society or part of a society. Sometimes these ailments are called 'folk illnesses', which sounds a little patronizing (but then again, so does ‘folk art’, and people pay lots of money for that). Anyway, I remember in grad school reading about one such syndrome, called latah, found in southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia and Malaysia. Latah's symptoms include a tendency to exhibit anti-social behaviour such as swearing or stripping off clothing in response to being startled. To add insult to injury, latah's victims suffer from 'hyper-startle', meaning that it doesn't take much to set them off. Similar but not identical syndromes have been reported in a few other, completely disparate populations, including the Ainu of northern Japan and French-Canadians in the US (the 'jumping Frenchmen of Maine', I believe they were called). My interest arose because I was part of a project that was studying Tourette syndrome, and I wondered about similarities, but there is no link.

It's been some time since I took an interest in latah per se, because I went off and studied vitamin A deficiency instead (in Indonesia, as it happens) but the concept of the culture-bound syndrome still intrigues me. Most recently I've been thinking about stress and the ways in which it, and its management, are bound and shaped by national cultures. 

At the three universities for which I worked in England, it seemed to me that people often got 'signed off' (excused) for 'stress'. It happened at all levels: academic staff, admin, students. It occurred outwith academia: my friends or acquaintances not in the university also talked about being signed off work for stress, for a week or a month or longer. There was no real shame in it, though I learned that it didn't do to inquire about the cause or nature of a colleague's or student's stress unless explicitly invited to discuss it. A GP's note sufficed; if the doctor diagnosed stress, that was it, no work and no question about it, by law as well as by custom. 

I've been employed in Canada now for over four years and as far as I know, only one of my colleagues or friends has missed work for 'stress'. (And in that case, the situation was so unusual that it made the national news.) I know of illnesses and injuries and births and bereavements all necessitating time away from the office, all discussed at reasonable length and with sympathy or joy, as appropriate. It's possible of course that stress-related leaves have occurred with me none the wiser, but even that is quite a difference from the British situation. I don't have a good explanation, or really any explanation. People in Canada talk about feeling stressed and about the negative consequences of stress-- of course-- but I've yet to run across its deployment as a reason to miss work.  Maybe there is less institutional regulation in Canada compared to the UK. For instance, parents here are not (yet) fined or censured for taking their kids out of school for the odd holiday, as happens in England; perhaps employees who feel the need for a day off can take one without requiring medical endorsement. 

Decades ago, when I had dropped out of graduate school for a couple of years, I worked as an assistant kindergarten teacher in a private school in El Cerrito, near Berkeley. The Sierra School had a wonderful system. If you needed a day off -- and sometimes, as a teacher of small children, you really do-- there was no need to lie about being ill or to get a doctor's note. You could claim a 'mental health day', with no pay docked or other consequence levied, several times a year (twice, or even thrice). When, some years ago,  I described this set-up to a few of my colleagues in the UK, they were amazed, to the point of thinking I was joking. 

I don't know about current stress management in the UK. Perhaps things have changed and people no longer get signed off for stress. Maybe some other culture-bound syndrome reigns.  It's been, shockingly, five-and-a-half years since we left England. In a few months we'll have lived as long in Toronto as we did in Sussex. Eldest child has just turned eighteen-- 18! He points out that he spent six years in Durham, six in Brighton, and soon it will be six in Toronto. He seems to think this means it's time to move on for the next six.

Now that stresses me out. I may need to take a mental health day.