When Samuel L. Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, visited Florence in 1867, he dutifully visited the city’s museums, churches, and tombs. But as I stood by the Arno, I began to get irritated that Italians insisted it was a river and not a stream. “They all call it a river, and they honestly think it’s a river, even these dark, bloody Florentines,” he complained. “Maybe in a month I will visit Florence under happier auspices and find everything beautiful and everything charming. But right now I don’t want to think about that at all.”
Traveling creates memories and expands your horizons. However, it can also cause feelings of discomfort, homesickness, and overload, common symptoms commonly known as “culture shock.” And for some, that discomfort can lead to full-blown distress, with travel exacerbating or even sparking mental health issues.
Creates “culture shock”
First of all, good news. It’s normal to feel uncomfortable when spending time outside of your own culture, even if it’s a long-awaited vacation. Feelings of discomfort, dislocation, and overload are so common among travelers that many refer to them as “culture shock.” But although the term has been around since the 1950s, Susan B. Goldstein, a professor of psychology at the University of Redlands who studies acculturation, says the term is outdated to describe these adaptation challenges. To tell. “‘Culture shock’ connotes a dramatic, unexpected, negative event,” says Goldstein. But while the vast majority of travelers will experience such difficulties, “the real sense of ‘shock’ is atypical,” she adds. “Many researchers no longer use this term because it is so atypical.”
Goldstein says the term culture shock itself is misunderstood, even down to how it came about. Although many people attribute the term to Canadian anthropologist Kalerbo Oberg, who started using it around 1960, Goldstein said the term was coined by anthropologist Ruth Benedict and was given a speech by colleague Cora Dubois. It dates back to the 1950s, when it was first used. About an anthropologist working in a strange land.
From discomfort to cultural competence
But it was Oberg’s vivid depiction of culture shock, written in response to his own multicultural experiences and growing interest in cultural exchange after World War II, that captivated the audience. The anthropologist described the adaptation process as an “occupational disease of people suddenly transplanted abroad,” a “disease” that progresses from the honeymoon stage through rejection of the new environment and finally to complete adaptation. He said that. By the 1970s, many researchers had adopted the idea that culture shock, like physical illness, progresses through a series of surprisingly consistent and universal stages.
However, contemporary research suggests that acculturation experiences are individual and not universal. “People have their ups and downs, but for the most part, they become more and more comfortable and capable over time,” Goldstein says. And while many people attribute culture shock to the host culture itself, individuals’ internal expectations and differences are just as important.
travel and mental illness
These expectations contribute to more dramatic forms of culture shock, such as Jerusalem syndrome, observed in some tourists who go from a functional psychological state to a religious psychosis while visiting the Holy Land. It seems there is. Identified as “Jerusalem fever” in the 1930s by Heinz Hermann, a psychiatrist who ran a private women’s hospital in Jerusalem, the condition had actually been observed among tourists for years. Medical historian Chris Sandal-Wilson said stories of mental illness and religiosity among pilgrims were common throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and that many tourists in the region were known as “religious maniacs” or “religious maniacs.” It says that there have been reports of “weird people.” By 2000, Israeli psychiatrists were seeing an average of 100 patients a year who developed a “unique psychiatric phenomenon” with delusions when faced with “a city that evokes a sense of the sacred, historic and heavenly.” It was reported that , magical thinking, and obsessive-compulsive psychosis.
Meanwhile, tourists in another city developed their own syndrome. In 2004, Japanese psychologist Hiroaki Ota and a group of French psychologists found that 63 Japanese tourists to Paris experienced “acute or violent” delusional episodes characterized by wandering, anxiety, and dissociation. I wrote about a series of psychiatric hospitalizations. This “sick trip” soon became known as Paris syndrome.
However, while the term has gained modern recognition, it is not recognized as a widespread mental illness and is not even listed in the diagnostic bible of the field, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. So is Stendahl syndrome, another travel-related condition in which people experience severe physical symptoms or faint when encountering beautiful art or architecture.
In fact, the number of people who actually experience psychosis while traveling is relatively small, Goldstein says. And it is doubtful whether the destination plays as big a role as the patient himself. Traveling can be stressful and worsen existing mental health conditions, but religious places can attract people with mental illness who have strong religious beliefs.
expectations and reality
Travelers’ own expectations can make things worse, and when expectations and experiences don’t match, it can cause discomfort and even emotional distress. Goldstein said many patients with Paris-Jerusalem syndrome can develop more severe symptoms because their image of the destination “doesn’t match reality.”
Realistic expectations are helpful, but so is the attitude of the traveler. Those who try to avoid cultural differences are worse off than those who embrace them, Goldstein said, adding that sojourners receive “cultural guidance” that helps them understand local conditions. Research shows that you should look for someone with whom you are comfortable.
And challenging cultural experiences can actually be a good thing. In a 2015 study of 2,500 teenage exchange students, researchers found that although acculturative stresses were common among the participants, they were unable to avoid them or receive support from others. I discovered that I faced it head-on without relying on it. Families tended to prosper and were more likely to complete the year without changing family members or returning home early.
Bottom line: Psychological discomfort is common while traveling, but distress is not. Goldstein said travelers should seek help if their distress persists or worsens over time, or if travel-related stress impairs their physical or daily functioning. states.
As for Clemens, the grumpy author was able to work through feelings of pain and confusion during his travels.He eventually completed his trip to Europe and wrote about it in his best-selling travel memoir. innocent people abroad, who famously stated that travel is “deadly to bigotry, bigotry, and bigotry.” With the right attitude and a willingness to ask for help when needed, you too can adapt and grow in your new environment, building new memories and resilience with each new stamp in your passport.