Mental Disorder: Anthropological Insights

by Nichola Khan

This brief book introduces the ways in which contemporary anthropology engages with the "psych" psychology, psychiatry, and medicine. Khan also widens the conversation by including the perspectives of epidemiologists, addiction and legal experts, journalists, filmmakers, activists, patients, and sufferers. New approaches to mental illness are situated in the context of historical, political, psychoanalytic, and postcolonial frameworks, allowing readers to understand how health, illness, normality, and abnormality are constructed and produced. Using case studies from a variety of regions, Khan explores what anthropologically informed psychology, psychiatry, and medicine can tell us about mental illness across cultures.

Genres: Psychology, Mental Health

144 pages, Paperback

Published November 16, 2016

Reviews

[Bohdan Pechenyak · Rating 5 out of 5]

A magnificently concise yet comprehensive overview of how mental health and culture interpenetrate and define one another. History, literature, public policy, globalized and postcolonial “order” are discussed in the context of mental “disorders”, emphasizing that this superficial duality masks a deeper unity - the disorders of globalization, post-colonialism, and post-industrial capitalism contributing to disturbing the psychological “order” (peace of mind) in many individuals. Schizophrenia, depression, bipolar - the “big three” disorders - are examined in relation to religion, biopsychiatry, psychopharmacology and psychotherapy. Psychedelic revival is also discussed and related to dysfunctions of public policy. Ethical need to both theorize and critique humanitarianism and its flaws and continue intervening and helping those in need closed out this fantastic book.