The pitfalls of universalism in child and adolescent psychiatry

Excerpt

In this issue of the Journal, as every month, you will find fascinating pieces of research done on samples of young people coming from clinical departments or from the general population. These samples can belong to very different cultural settings. This month, one paper was based on an international recruitment scheme (European more precisely). Two studies each recruited subjects in Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and one each in Canada, Finland, The Netherlands, China and in an unknown location. In parallel, the readership of European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (ECAP) stems from the whole planet. To what extent are the results presented in these papers transferable to your own cultural background? Most often, authors consider implicitly that their results are potentially universal, but what are the origins of such a postulate and to what extent is it acceptable? …