Exploring the East-West Divide in Prevalence of Affective Disorder: A Case for Cultural Differences in Coping With Negative Emotion

Lifetime rates of clinical depression and anxiety in the West tend to be approximately 4 to 10 times greater than rates in Asia. In this review, we explore one possible reason for this cross-cultural difference, that Asian cultures think differently about emotion than do Western cultures and that these different systems of thought help explain why negative affect does not escalate into clinical disorder at the same rate. We review research from...