A lot has been said and written about the relevance of well-conceived cultural concepts in the diagnostic assessment of all kinds of patients, in nosological elaborations and in treatment interventions, particularly with psychiatric patients (1). The resulting gains in prevention and public health impact and enhancement of quality of life indicators have also been broadly discussed. These perspectives have been strengthened in the last two or three decades, notwithstanding the notable progress of neurosciences and basic laboratory research (2). Yet, in terms of concrete accomplishments, all these accurate definitions, powerful and passionate advocacy efforts, and scholarly cogent arguments have moved clinical practice only slightly above the level of byzantine exchanges. In the diagnostic field, facts such as globalization and diversity, buttressed by massive internal and external migrations across the world, and technological advances reachable by the masses in all countries and continents, have made the need for a comprehensive cultural understanding of patients' lives, their symptoms, family history, beliefs and existential suffering, an almost mandatory requirement. Furthermore, realities such as poverty, inequities, racism, political restlessness, collective stress and disasters shape up clinical pictures, help-seeking modalities and the subsequent provider-patient relationship frames with an unmistakable cultural stamp (3). That is probably why the American Psychiatric Association, the representative psychiatric organization of the United States, the world's most diverse country, initiated in the late 1960s the work of renewing the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), hinting first at the need of including cultural items in its third version, and giving them a slightly wider, yet still unfairly insufficient, room in DSM-IV and in its revised text, DSM-IV-TR (4).