Globalisation affecting children's mental health around the world

Jul 4 2005

A child psychiatrist says that globalisation is affecting children’s mental health around the world, by imposing Western child rearing beliefs and psychiatric practice.

Sami Timimi, a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, at Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Trust, in the UK, says that western culture promotes individualism, competitiveness, and weakens social ties, while in contrast, many non-Western cultures encourage values such as duty and responsibility within a close family structure.

Timimi says that while the rates of psychological problems, such as crime, anxiety, and unhappiness, have increased sharply among young people in Western societies, the communal ethic of non-Western cultures seems to promote psychiatric wellbeing.

According to Timimi, by exporting Western ideas to developing countries is not only undermines local ways of solving children’s problems, but also masks the real life circumstances, such as poverty and exploitation, these children may face.

He says child psychiatrists in the West could gain new knowledge from examining childcare practices across the world, and must critically re-examine the narrow basis on which current theory and practice has developed.

This would not only help other culture’s children but also children in the West.

He also says that increased knowledge will also make it easier to engage with multi-ethnic communities that have different faith traditions and cultural beliefs from the host society.

The article is published in the British Medical Journal.