Mental Disorder: Anthropological Insights

by Nichola Khan

Overview

This brief book introduces the ways in which contemporary anthropology engages with the "psych" disciplines: 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442635357
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	11/16/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	383 KB

About the Author

Nichola Khan is a social and psychological anthropologist, a chartered psychologist, and Principal Lecturer, School of Applied Social Sciences, University of Brighton.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

1. Culture, Abnormality, and Disorder

2. Beyond Culture to the Suffering Subject

3. Culture, Psychiatry, and Cultures of Psychiatry

4. The Politics of Trauma

5. "The Big Three": Schizophrenia, Depression, and Bipolar Disorder

6. Globalization, Global Culture, and Global Mental Health

7. Drugs, God, and Talking: Shaping New "Orders" out of "Disorder"

Conclusion

Appendix I: Recommended Resources

References

Index

What People are Saying About This

Arthur Kleinman

I would certainly use this book for teaching undergraduates and graduates. Khan should be commended for skillfully weaving her way through a minefield of debates, controversies, and the thorny and controverted discourses that clash between the professions.

Eugene Raikhel

Mental Disorder provides a valuable introduction to the central issues and concerns of the anthropology of psychiatry and mental health. Well-conceptualized discussion questions and carefully chosen ideas for further reading and viewing make the text a key pedagogical aid.

Editorial Reviews

I would certainly use this book for teaching undergraduates and graduates. Khan should be commended for skillfully weaving her way through a minefield of debates, controversies, and the thorny and controverted discourses that clash between the professions.—Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University
Mental Disorder provides a valuable introduction to the central issues and concerns of the anthropology of psychiatry and mental health. Well-conceptualized discussion questions and carefully chosen ideas for further reading and viewing make the text a key pedagogical aid.—Eugene Raikhel, University of Chicago

From the Publisher