Some of the most innovative and provocative work on the emotions and illness is occurring in cross-cultural research on depression. Culture and Depression presents the work of anthropologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists who examine the controversies, agreements, and conceptual and methodological problems that arise in the course of such research. A book of enormous depth and breadth of discussion, Culture and Depression enriches the cross-cultural study of emotions and mental illness and leads it in new directions. It commences with a historical study followed by a series of anthropological accounts that examine the problems that arise when depression is assessed in other cultures. This is a work of impressive scholarship which demonstrates that anthropological approaches to affect and illness raise central questions for psychiatry and psychology, and that cross-cultural studies of depression raise equally provocative questions for anthropology. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987. Some of the most innovative and provocative work on the emotions and illness is occurring in cross-cultural research on depression. Culture and Depression presents the work of anthropologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists who examine the controversies

The body is a cultural vessel, giving voice to the unspoken words of the soul and transforming the nuances of distress into a script of symptoms that echoes across diverse cultural landscapes. Within the intricate tapestry of human experience, certain threads stand out, weaving a story that defies boundaries and spans the globe. Somatization Across Cultures unfurls these threads, illuminating the diverse landscape of somatisation disorders and their interplay with culture, identity, and healing practices. As you embark on this literary voyage, prepare to traverse continents and minds, exploring the profound connection between the physical and the psychological, the cultural and the clinical. Part of the Oxford Cultural Psychiatry series, this volume brings together the various somatisation syndromes: their description, presentation, assessment, and management in one place. It is a fascinating read for any psychiatrist, physician, clinical psychologist, public health specialist, nurse and other healthcare professional, as well as any sociologist, anthropologist, and policymaker, and anyone else interested in this area of psychiatry.

The publication of the Cultural Formulation Outline in the DSM-IV represented a significant event in the history of standard diagnostic systems. It was the first systematic attempt at placing cultural and contextual factors as an integral component of the diagnostic process. The year was 1994 and its coming was ripe since the multicultural explosion due to migration, refugees, and globalization on the ethnic composition of the U.S. population made it compelling to strive for culturally attuned psychiatric care. Understanding the limitations of a dry symptomatological approach in helping clinicians grasp the intricacies of the experience, presentation, and course of mental illness, the NIMH Group on Culture and Diagnosis proposed to appraise, in close collaboration with the patient, the cultural framework of the patient's identity, illness experience, contextual factors, and clinician-patient relationship, and to narrate this along the lines of five major domains. By articulating the patient's experience and the standard symptomatological description of a case, the clinician may be better able to arrive at a more useful understanding of the case for clinical care purposes. Furthermore, attending to the context of the illness and the person of the patient may additionally enhance understanding of the case and enrich the database from which effective treatment can be planned. This reader is a rich collection of chapters relevant to the DSM-IV Cultural Formulation that covers the Cultural Formulation's historical and conceptual background, development, and characteristics. In addition, the reader discusses the prospects of the Cultural Formulation and provides clinical case illustrations of its utility in diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. Book jacket.

This is the definitive textbook on global mental health, an emerging priority discipline within global health, which places priority on improving mental health and achieving equity in mental health for all people worldwide.

This open access book offers essential information on values-based practice (VBP): the clinical skills involved, teamwork and person-centered care, links between values and evidence, and the importance of partnerships in shared decision-making. Different cultures have different values; for example, partnership in decision-making looks very different, from the highly individualized perspective of European and North American cultures to the collective and family-oriented perspectives common in South East Asia. In turn, African cultures offer yet another perspective, one that falls between these two extremes (called batho pele). The book will benefit everyone concerned with the practical challenges of delivering mental health services. Accordingly, all contributions are developed on the basis of case vignettes, and cover a range of situations in which values underlie tensions or uncertainties regarding how to proceed in clinical practice. Examples include the patient’s autonomy and best interest, the physician’s commitment to establishing high standards of clinical governance, clinical versus community best interest, institutional versus clinical interests, patients insisting on medically unsound but legal treatments etc. Thus far, VBP publications have mainly dealt with clinical scenarios involving individual values (of clinicians and patients). Our objective with this book is to develop a model of VBP that is culturally much broader in scope. As such, it offers a vital resource for mental health stakeholders in an increasingly inter-connected world. It also offers opportunities for cross-learning in values-based practice between cultures with very different clinical care traditions.

Revisioning Psychiatry brings together new perspectives on the causes and treatment of mental health problems. The contributors emphasize the importance of understanding experience and explore how the brain, the person, and the social world interact to give rise to mental health problems as well as resilience and recovery.

Asian American Mental Health is a state-of-the-art compendium of the conceptual issues, empirical literature, methodological approaches, and practice guidelines for conducting culturally informed assessments of Asian Americans, and for assessing provider cultural competency within individuals and systems. It is the first of its kind on Asian Americans. This volume draws upon the expertise of many of the leading experts in Asian American and multicultural mental health to provide a much needed resource for students and professionals in a wide range of disciplines including clinical psychology, medical anthropology, psychiatry, cross-cultural psychology, multicultural counseling, ethnic minority psychology, sociology, social work, counselor education, counseling psychology, and more.

As the international community shrinks into a global village, cultures mix, meld, and blur, presenting psychiatric professionals with new challenges: a growing number of patients of different nationalities, ethnicities, and backgrounds. These sociocultural identities, so integral to personality, must be recognized and taken into account when diagnosing and treating mental illness. This is the premise behind transcultural psychiatry. On the leading edge of an emerging discipline, this compendium by respected clinicians from around the world is one of the first books to offer an in-depth look at transcultural psychiatry. Concise yet comprehensive, Clinical Methods in Transcultural Psychiatry draws on a wealth of case studies and relevant clinical experience to provide practicing clinicians with a basic foundation of "culturally informed" psychiatry on which they can build. Logically organized into six sections, the book begins with an overview of transcultural psychiatry and then moves to the important topic of cultural psychiatry and mental health services. Treatment approaches are addressed next, followed by highlights of recent research; special topics, such as how religious and supernatural beliefs affect behavior; and discussions and recommendations on education and training in transcultural psychiatry. The final section emphasizes families in cultural transition, focusing on the needs of women and children. Although transcultural psychiatry has never been more relevant than today, most psychiatric textbooks only briefly address it. This fascinating work -- covering everything from the impact of magic and religion in Italy to class, culture, and religion in London's inner city -- familiarizes readers with the principles and practices of transcultural psychiatry, focusing on the significance of cultural factors in the causes and meanings behind the pain and suffering -- as well as the healing -- of mental illness.

This book situates the essential areas of psychology within a cultural perspective, exploring the relationship of culture to psychological phenomena, from introduction and research foundations to clinical and social principles and applications. • Includes contributions from an experienced, international team of researchers and teachers • Brings together new perspectives and research findings with established psychological principles • Organized around key issues of contemporary cross-cultural psychology, including ethnocentrism, diversity, gender and sexuality and their role in research methods • Argues for the importance of culture as an integral component in the teaching of psychology