BACKGROUNDCulture affects all aspects of health and illness, including the perception of it, the
explanations for it, and the behavioral options to promote health or relieve suffering.
Anthropologists and transcultural nurses have demonstrated that people from
all cultural groups seek help for their suffering based on the meaning that culture
assigns to the suffering. Medical anthropology has used the phrase “idioms of distress”
to describe the culturally specific experience of psychosocial and physical
suffering. However, nursing is also interested in health promotion activities; our
interests extend equally to those processes by which people experience health,
understand the sources of it, and act to optimize or promote it for themselves and
others. Therefore, in this theory, the concept of idioms of distress is expanded into
the concept of “ idioms of wellness or distress .” An idiom of wellness or distress is
a collection of physical, emotional, and interpersonal sensations and experiences
labeled by the individual as optimal or abnormal and identified as important. Using
this new concept allows for the recognition of culturally distinct patterns of health
promotion, wellness and illness experience, meaning interpretation, and help seeking,
avoiding the premature and/or possibly erroneous conclusion that specific
signs of wellness and symptoms of distress or illness are identified and interpreted
the same way across cultures. Help seeking in this theory is defined as attempts to
maximize wellness or to ameliorate, mitigate, or eliminate distress.