Social Self As Part Of Depression - 1051 Words

Adding on to that, another study showed a culturally salient factor ,negative social self as constituting part of depression. (Koh, Chang ,Fung and Kee 2007, p.225) This negative social self was found to cause hopelessness, poor self esteem, and control related beliefs. (Koh, Chang ,Fung and Kee 2007, p.225) The study goes on to further state that culturally embedded stressors (Yamamoto et al. 1997, cited in Koh, Chang ,Fung and Kee 2007, p.226) strongly influences the phenomenological experiences of emotions and their communications. (Koh, Chang ,Fung and Kee 2007, p.226) It was found that Taiwan had lower levels of depression and other psychiatric disorders as compared to the US. (Hwu et al 1989, cited in Caldwell-Harris †¦show more content†¦Moreover, a study by Kross and Grossmann (2010) highlights the impact of culture on adaptive versus maladaptive self reflection by comparing Americans and Russians, whereby culture was shown to affect the amount of self distancing o f emotions, with the Russians being found to have less detrimental forms of self reflection. This proves that culture can affect the amount and type of self reflections that individuals carry out, as well as the extent of self distancing. As shown through this study, self distancing could serve as a regulator for an individual s emotions or the impact of emotions on the cognitive aspect of the individual. Another study by Falicov (2003) proves that there were more stigmatization of mental illnesses such as depression in collectivist societies as compared to individualistic ones, whereby a Japanese woman confided in a close friend of hers only for her friend to shun her. With such stigmatization, it is less likely that people will be open to acknowledge their problems or seek help in collectivist societies, leading to the sustainment of depression due to the extent of expressed emotions in such cultures. On top of that, culture is also shown to affect thought processes. Members of collectivistic tendencies tend to focus on negative consequences while members of individualistic tendencies tend to focus more on positive consequences. (Lee et al. 2000, Briley Wyer 2002, cited in Diener, Oishi Lucas 2003, p.412) This