Based on the ethnographic research carried out on speech-based therapies at health centers in marginalized areas of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, this article problematizes the “breaking down” or “being broken” as a local language of afflictions that emerges from the rapidly deteriorating material living conditions related to downward social mobility. Specifically, I analyze how these discomforts

Culturally appropriate spiritual care is increasingly recognised as a crucial component of spiritual care. As part of a larger study, we were interested in cultural and racial issues as experienced by spiritual carers in a hospice in Cape Town, South Africa. We conducted one-on-one interviews and focus group discussions with a cohort of spiritual care workers, who, being volunteers and relatively privileged

In the spring of 1962, a series of alarming headlines greeted American newspaper readers. From “New York Living for Nuts Only” and “One in Five Here Mentally Fit” to “Scratch a New Yorker, and What Do You Find?” and “City Gets Mental Test, Results are Real Crazy,” the stories highlighted the shocking and, to some, incredible statistics that fewer than one in five (18.5%) Manhattanites had good mental

An international ban on psychedelics initiated by the United Nations’ Convention on Psychotropic Substances in 1971 restricted the clinical use of these ancient psychoactive substances. Yet, in an era marked by rising mental health concerns and a growing “Deaths of Despair” epidemic (i.e., excess mortality and morbidity from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism), the structured psychedelic use that

What are the linguistic dimensions of pain, and what kind of articulations arise from these painful experiences? How does the language of pain circulate, connect, and reach across histories, gendered realities, and social politics? In what ways might the language of pain act on and transform the world by shaping and changing socio-political agendas? I explored these questions among women in Kosovo

Using the large datasets available with new gene sequencing and biobank projects, behavioral geneticists are developing tools that attempt to predict individual intelligence based on genetics. These predictive tools are meant to enable a ‘precision education’ that will transform society. These technological developments have not changed the fundamental aims of a program with a long history. Behavioral

Gender differences in the prevalence of psychiatric disorders, with higher prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders among women, have been the focus of much debate. In Iran, the adoption of the construct of Bipolar Spectrum Disorder (BSD) and of the concept of “soft bipolarity” has been associated with a large gender difference in rates of diagnosis. This paper discusses the gendered meanings of the

The seventeenth-century British Civil Wars had a scale and impact to rival modern conflicts and its effects extended to children as well as adults. What might be today termed “child soldiers” were found in the armies in combat and supporting roles. Many more were witnesses to the conflict or had their lives changed by its consequences. This article is an historical case study of socio-cultural constructions

Over the last fifty years, American psychiatrists have embraced psychotropic drugs as their primary treatment intervention. This has especially been the case in their treatment of patients suffering from psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. This focus has led to an increasing disregard for patients’ subjective lived-experiences, life histories, and social contexts. This transformation of American

Cognitive remediation therapy (CRT) aims to optimise cognitive abilities of people who suffer from schizophrenia in order to improve their social adaptation. This therapeutic orientation was developed in psychiatry in the 1980s and 1990s, at a time when the disorder was being redefined as a neurocognitive deficit disorder. In this article, I describe CRT as an assemblage that lies at the intersection

The biomedical aspiration of psychiatry has fundamentally reoriented clinical practice since the DSM-III in 1980 and reverberated in the public sphere. Over time, lay public understanding of the causes of mental suffering has increasingly endorsed biological conceptions. In this paper, I explore the sources from which a neurobiological model for mental suffering reaches ordinary people, and investigate

Drawing from research on ‘paper technologies’ conducted by medical historians Volker Hess and Andrew Mendelsohn, among others, this article explores how Adolf Meyer (1866–1950) and his staff at the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic used customized punch cards to develop an alternative conceptualization of schizophrenia: ‘parergasia.’ It begins by examining ‘dementia praecox,’ the conceptual precursor to both

In low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) it is vital to understand acceptable, comprehensive, and culturally appropriate ways of communicating about mental distress. Diagnostic terminology is rarely used, may be stigmatizing, and is subject to misinterpretation. Local terms, such as idioms of distress, can improve mental health literacy and service delivery. Our objective was to examine lived experience

The original version of this article unfortunately contained an error. In the reference list the author name “Joanne Cacciatore” is incorrectly spelled as “Joanne Corriatore”.

Mexicans living in the United States frequently rely upon popular healing to address a broad spectrum of physical, psychological, and spiritual ailments. They practice Mesoamerican healing ways including using herbal remedies, employing nutritional health promotion and illness remediation, over the counter pharmaceuticals, prayer and religion, and visiting expert healers. In this article, we utilize

In recent years, claims that developmental brain science should inform pedagogical approaches have begun to influence educational policies. This article investigates the promise, pitfalls, processes, and implications of these claims. We explore how research on neuroplasticity has led to enormous interest in harnessing mechanistic models of development for applications in the classroom. Synthesizing

Channeling experiences are often compared with Dissociative Trance/Possession Disorders and Dissociative Identity Disorders and more recent diagnostic criteria presented in the DSM 5 and ICD-11. From this comparison, it emerges quite clearly that, for most cases, channeling can either be considered an exceptional non-ordinary mental experience or a non-pathological Dissociative Trance/Possession experience

This article examines the historiography of depression, with an eye to illuminating wider issues in the social study of psychiatry and depression. It argues that the advent of Prozac caused notable shifts in how scholars in the looked at depression. Far from solidifying the medical status of depression and psychiatry’s treatment of it, the spread of pill-oriented depression treatment strengthened social

This article analyzes how trans health was negotiated on the margins of psychiatry from the late 1970s and early 1980s. In this period, a new model of medical transition was established for trans people in Norway. Psychiatrists and other medical doctors as well as psychologists and social workers with a special interest and training in social medicine created a new diagnostic and therapeutic regime

Generations of scholars have debated hair’s significance as a symbol of womanhood, fertility, and spiritual morality in South India. For contemporary Indian women, hair is a site of concern, often expressed as an everyday preoccupation with hair loss or “hair fall,” as it is known in the subcontinent. This exploratory study investigated hair fall among Kannada-speaking Hindu women in the South Indian

Physician-assisted death (PAD) for patients suffering from a mental illness is allowed in the Netherlands under certain conditions but is a very controversial topic, mainly discussed by ethicists and physicians. The voice of the patient is rarely included in the debate, so we know little about what their views on the topic are. We aim to understand the views of patients with mental illness and wish

This article addresses conflicting concerns related to space for mourning in Norway. It draws on material from qualitative interviews with bereaved parents who have lost a child in stillbirth. Space for mourning, and the need for sick leave, arose as a crucial concern and complex issue in these interviews. Although initiatives have been developed to introduce grief as a valid category in diagnostic

In recent years, alcohol abuse and dependence have become topics of increasing concern in Uganda, but the chronic relapsing brain disease model of addiction remains only one of many ways of understanding and addressing alcohol-related problems there. For many Ugandan Pentecostals and spirit mediums to be addicted is to be under the control of a being that comes from outside the self. Where these two

This article presents an analysis of the lived experiences of youth mental health practitioners taking part in Transcultural Interinstitutional and Interdisciplinary Case Discussion Seminars (TIICDS), an intercultural training initiative developed in Montréal (Québec, Canada), while considering the current context of increasing social polarizations. Using insights from the community of practice (CoP)

Ethnic minority females are less likely to receive a diagnosis or treatment for an eating disorder (ED). This study captured the experiences of therapists who have worked with ethnic minority females to improve outcomes for this group. Twelve therapists in the United Kingdom, London were recruited for semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Shame was cited as

Worldwide there are 79.5 million displaced people, many of which face war, violence, tragic flights and struggles in host countries. Research shows augmented prevalence rates of mental disorders among refugees internationally, but little is known about refugee mental health in Latin American countries. Furthermore, only a few studies have taken into consideration the knowledge of clinical psychologists

Anorexia nervosa is a paradoxical disorder, regarded across disciplines as a body project and yet also an illness of disembodied subjectivity. This overlooks the role that material environments—including objects and spaces—play in producing embodied experiences of anorexia both within and outside treatment. To address this gap, this paper draws together two ethnographic studies of anorexia to explore

In this paper I analyze philosophically the dominant conception of happiness operative in the increasingly popular global movement to empirically define, measure, and promote human happiness: the idea of “subjective psychological wellbeing” (SWB). SWB is presented as an ethically and metaphysically neutral “scientific” view of the human good or wellbeing, grounded purely in empirical psychology, survey

For years, Common law and Civil Code have determined the legal age as majority which defines adulthood, giving a presumption of legal capacity to adults. At this age, all adults are presumed to be capable of making their own decisions, protecting their interests and exercising the rights they enjoy in the acts of their civil life. This legal presumption of capacity structures the life-course of adults

Although we are accustomed to thinking about technology as involving things—objects and processes—derived from scientific discoveries, science also creates a technology of ideas, ways of thinking both about the world and about human beings. And unlike “thing technology,” “idea technology” can have powerful effects even when the ideas are false. This paper discusses false idea technology, or ideology

This article examines the self-concept of the person who experienced Notq -the Druze phenomenon of remembering and talking about previous life. We focus on ‘solved’ stories- ones in which the person identifies his/her previous incarnation. The central question of this study is: What is the phenomenological experience of a person who has had Notq? In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with

Drawing from ethnographic research with psychedelic therapists and researchers, this article explores political tensions between two sources of efficacy within psychedelic therapy: the self and the chemical. At times researchers and therapists emphasize the specificity of chemical effects in relationship to the neurobiology of particular diagnoses. And at other times they foreground the self as the

Biomedicine tends to treat “mental” illnesses as if they could be isolated from multiple social and somatic problems. Yet mental suffering is inseparable from complex somatosocial relations. Clinical fieldwork in a deprived area of the UK shows that nearly all the people treated for “depression” are chronically multimorbid, both in their bodies and in their social relations. Mental suffering is co-produced

This paper explores how criticism surrounding the ethics and safety of biomedical technologies circulates and ‘converts’ through global–local religious encounters, producing new claims of moral opposition and rights to religious freedom. The paper is concerned with the question of what rhetorical devices make vaccine safety doubt relevant to religiously Orthodox settings and what implications arise

Standardized assessment tools developed in western contexts may systematically miss certain problems that are considered important in non-western cultures. In this mixed-methods study, we used an open-ended assessment tool (the Top Problem Assessment; TPA) to identify culturally relevant concerns among low-income Kenyan youth. We then (a) applied thematic analysis to identify the most frequently reported

This article presents the case of a young, second generation American Muslim man who was admitted involuntarily to an adult psychiatric inpatient unit. The patient’s clinical picture was unclear—the treatment team was unsure if he demonstrated signs and symptoms of bipolar disorder or if a personality disorder (antisocial or narcissistic) better explained his presentation. His clinical picture after

In this piece, the authors present the case of a young Black American man who experienced symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder after an episode of police violence. Through engagement with this case, the authors consider whether trauma-focused psychotherapies, particularly trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapies (TF-CBT), are equipped to attend to contextual factors relevant to traumatic

Cancer is regarded as a disease that redefines an individual’s life and relationships. The medicalization and reclamation of the individual’s sense of body, self, and social life have been long examined by psychiatry and anthropology alike. We argue that creating comics is a form of artistic narrative that affirms and proclaims the existence of a past and future possibilities for individuals diagnosed

In this article, I argue that rhythm is a key concept in understanding autism. The article builds on fieldwork conducted amongst autistic children at two specialized institutions in Denmark, as well as interviews with parents of autistic children, some of whom were also autistic themselves. The paper draws on Lefebvre’s theory of ‘rhythmanalysis’ and treats rhythm as a ‘way of being’. Viewing autism

Attending to the shades of grey in eating disorder recovery may help to illuminate possibilities for navigating recoveries in their full complexity and diversity. There is a need for more complexity and flexibility in understandings of the timelines, processes, endpoints, and versions of eating disorder recoveries. In this article, we explore eating disorder recovery as a dynamic, intercorporeal, and

Idioms of distress have been employed in psychological anthropology and global mental health to solicit localized understandings of suffering. The idiom “thinking too much” is employed in cultural settings worldwide to express feelings of emotional and cognitive disquiet with psychological, physical, and social consequences on people’s well-being and daily functioning. This systematic review investigates

At a psychiatric refugee clinic for survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide, a survey revealed that 42% (38/90) had auditory hallucinations (AHs) in the last month. Of those with AHs, 87% (33/38) had PTSD, whereas of those without AHs, 31% (16/52) had PTSD, giving a chi square of 27.8, p < .001, odds ratio 14.8 (4.8–45). Most AHs were of a “ghost summoning” (khmaoch hao), considered an exhortation to

The article aims at analysing online depression forums enabling lay reinterpretation and criticism of expert biomedical discourses. Firstly, two contrasting interpretations of depression are reconstructed: expert psy-discourses are confronted with the phenomenological descriptions of lay experiences, with a special emphasis on online forums as empirical platforms hosting such debates. After clarifying

In this introduction, we propose the notion of ‘embodied belonging’ as a fruitful analytical heuristic for scholars in medical and psychological anthropology. We envision this notion to help us gain a more nuanced understanding of the entanglements of the political, social, and affective dimensions of belonging and their effects on health, illness, and healing. A focus on embodied belonging, we argue

This paper examines how cultural, historical and contemporary perspectives of mental health continue to inform ways of understanding and responding to mental distress even under the biomedical gaze of the Movement for Global Mental Health (MGMH). Based on experiences in Malawi, the authors explore three prominent interventions (practical support, counselling and support groups) employed by village

This qualitative study presents migrant patient perspectives on using the Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI) in mental health assessments in Denmark. Empirical data consisted of 20 recorded CFI sessions and 16 patient interviews, coded with a constructivist grounded theory approach. Empirical findings prompted us to draw on the theoretical framework of intersubjective recognition in the analytical

This paper engages with the notion of ‘embodied belonging’ through an ethnography of the social and material aspects of accessing mental health care in the UK. I focus on moments of access and transition in a voluntary sector organisation in London: an intercultural psychotherapy centre, serving a range of im/migrant communities. Whilst both ‘belonging’ and ‘place’ are often invoked to imply stability

The DSM-5 proposes that self-harm be recognized as a diagnostic category of mental disease, compared to its previous definition as a behavioral symptom. Based on fieldwork in London, I challenge this proposal by exploring the life-history of a homeless sex-worker and substance-user who practices self-cutting. By bringing phenomenological anthropology into conversation with psychoanalytic theory, this

Physician-assisted death for patients suffering from psychiatric disorders is allowed in the Netherlands under certain circumstances. One of the central problems that arise with regard to this practice is the question of whether it is possible to distinguish between suicidality and a request for physician-assisted death. We set up this study to gain insight into how psychiatrists and general practitioners

The original version of the article unfortunately contained an error and it has been corrected with this erratum.

Interoceptive awareness is the conscious perception of sensations that create a sense of the physiological condition of the body. A validation study for the Japanese translation of the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) surprised with a factor structure different from the original English-language version by eliminating two of eight scales. This prompted an exploration of

Patients often adhere to intrathecal opioid therapy (IOT) for many years, despite the lack of scientific evidence for its efficacy and the scarce knowledge about long-term effects. Moreover, there is no knowledge on how the efficacy of IOT is influenced by cultural factors. We assessed the long-term efficacy and frequency of side effects of IOT in two culturally different patient samples. A chart review

Drawing on ethnographic research among asylum seekers in the Midwestern United States, this article investigates how a profound sense of limbo informed the use, meaning, and experiences of psychotherapeutic interventions, namely psychiatric medication and psychotherapy. In doing so, the article brings into dialogue a consideration of temporal and spatial uncertainty as a key feature of refugee distress

Limited research has investigated whether clinicians around the world find diagnostic criteria for depression that were originally developed in the West are useful with diverse populations. Using an embedded mixed-methods design in India, we examined (a) clinicians’ and trainees’ (n = 143) ratings of the usefulness of the criteria for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) outlined in two major diagnostic

Psychiatric neurosurgery has resurfaced over the past two decades for the treatment of severe mental health disorders, with improved precision and safety over older interventions alongside the development of novel ones. Little is known, however, about current public opinions, expectations, hopes, and concerns over this evolution in neurotechnology, particularly given the controversial history of psychosurgery

While Japan boasts a universal healthcare system and state-of-the-art medical technology, healthcare has often been denied to those who do not conform to moral ideals of a deserving patient. In underclass enclaves known as yoseba (day laborers’ quarter), patients have been frequently turned away or blacklisted on grounds of their abnormality and non-compliance. As much as healthcare was enmeshed in

Drawing on fieldwork and interviews in Oslo and Bergen, Norway, this article discusses irregular migrants’ experiences of existential displacement and the tactics they use to try to re-establish a sense of emplacement and belonging. More specifically, it argues that irregular migrants’ experiences of embodied unbelonging are a consequence of a violent form of governmentality that includes specific

Despite extensive ethnographic and qualitative research on traditional healers in Nepal, the role of traditional healers in relation to mental health has not been synthesized. We focused on the following clinically based research question, “What are the processes by which Nepali traditional healers address mental well-being?” We adopted a scoping review methodology to maximize the available literature

In this article, we explore the power of shared embodiment for the constitution of an affective community. More specifically, we examine how people afflicted by long-term, arduous experiences of war, migration, and discrimination sensually articulate and, at least temporarily, renegotiate feelings of non/belonging, care, and in/exclusion. Methodologically, we draw on emplaced ethnography and systematic

With the United States military stretched thin in the “global war on terror,” military officials have embraced psychopharmaceuticals in the effort to enable more troops to remain “mission-capable.” Within the intimate conditions in which deployed military personnel work and live, soldiers learn to read for signs of psychopharmaceutical use by others, and consequently, may become accountable to those