Citation

Tzeng WC, Lipson JG. Fam. Community Health 2007; 30(1): 74-83.

Affiliation

Department of Nursing, Tri-Service General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Taiwan, and the Department of Community Health Systems, University of California, San Francisco, USA. wctzeng@mail.ndmctsgh.edu.tw

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins)

DOI

10.1097/00003727-200701000-00009

PMID

17149034

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to describe "fan", a culturally constructed expression of emotional and psychological discomfort, from the perspective of 34 suicidal patients in Taipei, Taiwan. An important finding from this ethnographic study is an idiom of emotional distress, fan, which is not expressed as related to a body part like in most previous research on expressions of psychological symptoms in Chinese cultures. This description will help health professionals better understand what fan means to Chinese patients and what methods they use to cope with it.

Language: en