Disease as a socio-cultural syndrome: Between nature and culture (to the problem statement)

The article raises the question of cultural factors that affect various types of diseases, and how nature and culture interact in this area. No disease is perceived by society only as a physical condition of the body, but necessarily it is interpreted and presented in the categories of culture, that is, it is semiotized. Otherwise, there will be neither a discourse of the disease nor a strategy for overcoming it. The culture diagnoses a deviant behavior and/ or condition by deciding what is a disease that requires treatment, and what is a blight, possession, or acquisition of a shamanic gift. Culture sets not only the explanation and attitude to the disease, its clinical explication, but also the circumstances that can provoke it. Factors that influence the occurrence of diseases directly or indirectly include a wide range of phenomena, such as a system ofbeliefs, norms, values, taboos and related phobias, which can provoke various culturally-determined syndromes. Religious prescriptions, marriage norms, principles of endogamy/exogamy, ethnocentric attitudes open or close the floodgates for the influx of new genetic material, thereby affecting the likelihood and frequency of these or other hereditary pathologies in the community. From diverse cultural practices as well it will depend on the picture of infectious diseases and the speed of their spread. Thus, in some cases, culture turns out to be primary in relation to nature, creating the ground for organic prerequisites that cause diverse deviations, from mental illness to hereditary and even infectious diseases. It becomes a unique species feature of the history of homo sapiens