[Influence of individual cultural life on the penal system: the role of the medical expert]. / L'influence du vécu culturel individuel sur la procédure pénale: le rôle du médecin-expert.

A French Melanesian citizen who killed his uncle attributed his act to local beliefs involving witchcraft. The medical expert called on to give his psychiatric assessment ponders if he was able to fulfill his role of mediator. Since examination of the defendant revealed no mental abnormalities, the only possible explanation for the crime was the one implicating the local culture that made the defendant say that he had not killed a relative but rather a sorcerer. The psychiatrist asked the lawyer for a complete legal opinion. From the penal standpoint establishing responsibility depends on the defendant's powers of discrimination. Criminal law distinguishes between the intent, motive, and objectives of an act on the basis of one criteria which is damage in most cases. In the present case the act was intentional, the motive could not be taken into account, and the objective could not be considered to have social value. This case forces the conclusion that the juridical concept of "justifying fact" is based on social choices that rarely coincide with the culture of individuals in a minority group. By finding the defendant guilty the judicial system achieved social redress with respect to one culture but denied moral redress according to the values of another.

[Note about Caledonian ethno-medicine (author's transl)]. / Note sur l'ethno-médecine canaque.

Natives of New Caledonia believe that both worlds of the living creatures and of the dead are the same but with two aspects. Still these two worlds frequently oppose each other: witches are able on the request of the dead, to cast spell over; but medicine-men, if requested in due time, can prevent or cure their bad effects. Among the various noxious consequences of witches action is madness, which is not considered as a mental illness but either as a consequence of a spell or as punishment for a tabu transgression. So, mental patients are generally presented first to the medicine-man and, if necessary, in a second time reported to the occidental medicine. In such a situation, a good cooperation between the medicine-man and the psychiatric is strongly recommended.

[Sociology of mental diseases in New Caledonia (statistical approach) 1965-1977]. / Sociologie des maladies mentales en Nouvelle-Caledonie (approche statistique) 1965-1977.

The author has proceeded from a statistical analysis of 2616 records between 1965 and 1977 at Noumea in New Caledonia. Following the nature "multi-ethnics" of the population and the allotment nearly equal to the one between the town and the country, it has been possible to put obviousness some numbers of significant acts, particularly a clear disparity of the rate of psychopathological morbidity taking into consideration the ethnicity, geographical situation, sex, even the period of the year concerning the suicidal actions. - The present paragraph is a summing up of the original work.

[Neurological disorders in sickle-cell disease (author's transl)]. / Manifestations neurologiques des drépanocytoses.

Neurological disorders may be, specially in children, the first and dramatic troubles giving notice of the hematological disease. These disorders, listed according to their frequency are: cerebral vascular thrombosis, epilepsy, bacterial meningitis, meningism, cerebral thrombo-phlebitis, disorders of cranial nerves, hydrocephalus related to a pachy meningitis. One must be cautious with transfusions. Paraclinical neurological tests have no specificity.

[Use of a rating scale in transcultural psychiatry]. / A propos de l'utilisation d'une échelle d'évaluation en psychiatrie transculturelle

The Psychopharmacological Studies Group of Fann, Dakar, considered the cultural expression of mental illness as it would help for a new definition of the nosographic frames, and inside of them, the appreciation of symptoms. This new definition would be applied "universally" if it may be considered that some symptoms are "culture-free" and others deeply marked by the discourse held by the person or by his social group. The use of valuation scales for symptomatic change during a treatment (here anti-depressive one) become harder by the undifferenciation of these two types of symptoms. Further, it may exist nosographic masks which can hide more curable substructures ; as often happens here, in masked depressions when the presented symptoms are those of acute or chronic psychotic manifestations. The efficacy of depressive treatment is then remarkable.