The role of culture is central in infuencing PTSD symptoms. For example, cultures indoctrinate us to view the world in certain ways and to use our emotions and bodies in different ways. Many cultures are personalistic in the sense that their world views believe in autonomous spirit beings which can affect human beings for good or bad. Where I did my fieldwork in India many years ago many psychiatric conditions were often viewed as ‘spirit possession’, since this is psychologically accessible to people who believe in a cosmology which has various kinds of spirit beings. Cultural symbols are powerful in informing emotions which affects psychoneuroimmunological systems. Ancestral shamans used technologies of the mind in order to treat all kinds of traumatic circumstances. While the phenotypic symptoms of PTSD are similar, understanding of its cause and prognosis is different. In Latin America PTSD may be understood as ‘nervios’ and ‘susto’, while in Iranian/Afghan, North Indian cultures it is often referred to as ‘asabi’ or ‘hona bud’ . What is important is that the person who has PTSD symptoms needs to retrieve some kind of ontological security. Cultures may significantly help via the performance of rituals which neurologically create endocannabinoids while decreasing stress hormones noradrenaline, adrenaline and cortisol. Rituals are powerful in that they manipulate powerful emotions which inform somatic feedback systems. Many healing rituals performed by ritual specialists, shamans, religious specialists in collective societies use healing rituals as social events which act to unite social members and reaffirms socio-religious worldviews. Social rituals are very powerful in manipulating emotions which can act to heal or transform people with psycho-physical maladies. The social mind is powerful in its ability to imagine all kinds of things which directly affects psychoneuroimmunological response.

Hi

I think such as you because culture play a crucial role in symtomathology of PTSD. The influence of culture on clinical features of dissociative and conversion disorders such as hysteria and fuge is recognized across the international studies. For example, the roles of religious and cultural rituals in dissociative disorders are well known in Iran. However, we do not know how cultural factors like religion, gender, social class etc play influences on clinical feature of PTSD. We know emotion-oriented coping and negative emotionalism can increase the rate of re-experience about disaster and trauma in Iranian with PTSD. But we do not know how these factors infulence the nature of clinical sypmtoms in PTSD, and what is the mechanisms underline such influences, are they learned or they have some physiological mechanisms? So, the is a need for a comprehensive theory that helps to explain the roles of cultural factors in patients with PTSD.

I'm pretty sure that remuneration systems for veterans have an effect.

The Trouble with PTSD.

Traumatology(e). Vol 5, 1: (1999)

http://psyberspace.com.au/articles/troublewithPTSD.pdf

Thank you very much.

There are studies that creating educated, compassionate support systems within the community can greatly ease the symptomatology of PTSD. A growing support of Alternative Treatment and Trauma Sensitivity Training for Professionals is also shown to assist in easing the flare ups and the secondary effects of PTSD:

http://www.sundarayogatherapy.com/anxietyclinic.htm

http://www.news.wisc.edu/21438

Uncertainty avoidance culture

The dimension Uncertainty Avoidance has to do with the way that a society deals with the fact that the future can never be known: should we try to control the future or just let it happen? This ambiguity brings with it anxiety and different cultures have learnt to deal with this anxiety in different ways. The extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations and have created beliefs and institutions that try to avoid these is reflected in the UAI score.

Iran scores 59 on this dimension and thus has a high preference for avoiding uncertainty. Countries exhibiting high uncertainty avoidance maintain rigid codes of belief and behaviour and are intolerant of unorthodox behaviour and ideas. In these cultures there is an emotional need for rules (even if the rules never seem to work) time is money, people have an inner urge to be busy and work hard, precision and punctuality are the norm, innovation may be resisted, security is an important element in individual motivation ( http://geert-hofstede.com/iran.html).