Schizophrenia has long puzzled researchers in the fields of psychiatric medicine and anthropology. Why is it that the rates of developing schizophrenia--long the poster child for the biomedical model of psychiatric illness--are low in some countries and not in others? And why do migrants to Western countries find that they are at higher risk for this disease when they arrive? T.M. Luhrmann and Jocelyn Marrow argue it is because the root causes for schizophrenia are not only biological, but also sociocultural. This book gives an intimate, personal account of those living with serious psychotic disorder in the U.S., India, Africa, and Southeast Asia. It introduces the notion that social defeat--the physical or symbolic defeat of one person by another--is a core mechanism in the increased risk for psychotic illness. Furthermore, 'care as usual' as it occurs in the U.S. actually increases the likelihood of social defeat, whereas 'care as usual' in a country like India diminishes it.
Author(s): T. M. Luhrmann; Jocelyn Marrow
Series: Ethnographic Studies in Subjectivity
Publisher: University of California Press
Year: 2016
Language: English
Pages: 303
"I'm schizophrenic!" how diagnosis can change identity in the U.S. / T.M. Luhrmann --
Diagnostic neutrality in psychiatric treatment in North India / Amy June Sousa --
Vulnerable transition in a world of kin : in the shadow of good wifeliness in North India / Jocelyn Marrow --
Work and respect in Chennai / Giulia Mazza --
Racism and immigration : an African-Caribbean woman in London / Johanne Eliacin --
Voices that are more benign : the experience of auditory hallucinations in Chennai / T.M. Luhrmann and R. Padmavati --
Demonic voices : one man's experience of God and witches in Accra, Ghana / Damien Droney --
Madness experienced as faith : temple healing in South India / Anubha Sood --
Faith interpreted as madness : religion, poverty, and psychiatry in the life of a Romanian woman / Jack Friedman --
The culture of the institutional circuit in the United States / T.M. Luhrmann --
Return to baseline : a different kind of psychosis in Thailand / Julia Cassaniti --
A fragile recovery in the United States / Neely Myers.
