Koro is largely considered to be a culture-specific psychiatric disorder occurring primarily in Southeast Asian cultures though a large number of the cases has been reported beyond the cultural boundary as well, leading to a debate concerning the culture-specific nature of the syndrome. Classically it is manifested by acute anxiety associated with the fear of genital retraction, accompanied by fear of death induced by the thought that complete disappearance of the genital organ will result in death. Majority of the cases have been witnessed in male gender. Most of the female cases are from Koro epidemic. Sporadic individual case reports of Koro in female are very few.
Giving a psychopathological and nosological definition of this peculiar syndrome has also been problematic. In this paper, we report a case of koro in a young, Indian female patient. We briefly present the etiological factors related to the development of the syndrome, the most significant psychopathological characteristics and issues related to cultural specificity of the syndrome especially in a sporadic individual case.
Koro
