 The significance of this range of syndromes lies not in their strangeness, but in the striking evidence they provide about the ways in which culture shapes mental illness. Indeed, it suggests that culture has a profound influence on several key dimensions of psychological dysfunction, affecting not just how it is diagnosed and treated, but also how it is expressed and assigned social significance. For example, schizophrenics from different cultures experience different kinds of auditory hallucinations, which they and the members of their community interpret in different ways (Luhrmann et al. 2015). The very existence of culture bound syndromes also suggests the possibility that the forms of mental disorder common in Western societies may be no exceptions to the rule. Certain eating disorders, for instance, may be culturally transmitted, spreading contagiously through social learning and media consumption (Vandereycken 2011). Evidence also suggests that while some cross culturally shared elements of PTSD flow from an innate human response to danger, others symptoms exhibit variation. For example, the depressive symptoms associated with PTSD in American war veterans may be the result of sufferers understanding themselves to have violated their own culture’s moral norms (Zefferman &amp; Mathew 2021; also see Munch-Jurisic forthcoming).