Background: In order to facilitate case identification of incident (untreated and recent onset) cases of psychosis and controls in three sites in India, Nigeria and Trinidad, we sought to understand how psychoses (or madness) were conceptualized locally. The evidence we gathered also contributes to a long history of research on concepts of madness in diverse settings. […]
Abstract A number of studies have explored hallucinations as complex experiences involving interactions between psychological, biological, and environmental factors and mechanisms. Nevertheless, relatively little attention has focused on the role of culture in shaping hallucinations. This article reviews the published research, drawing on the expertise of both anthropologists and psychologists. We argue that the extant […]
Abstract Background We still know little about whether and how the auditory hallucinations associated with serious psychotic disorder shift across cultural boundaries. Aims To compare auditory hallucinations across three different cultures, by means of an interview-based study. Method An anthropologist and several psychiatrists interviewed participants from the USA, India and Ghana, each sample comprising 20 […]
About the Book 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 higher in others? And why do migrants to Western countries find that they are at […]
INTRODUCTION In his book Witchcraft, Intimacy, and Trust, the social anthropologist Peter Geschiere—who has worked among the Maka people of southwest Cameroon since the early 1970s—relates the story of Jean Eba. Eba was a successful fonctionnaire—a civil servant and political operative—who in the late 1960s returned to his village: "Eba felt ill, his complaints were quite mysterious […]
SUMMARY In her role as devoted wife, the Hindu goddess Parvati is the divine embodiment of viraha, the agony of separation from one's beloved, a form of love that is also intense suffering. These contradictory emotions reflect the overlapping dissolutions of love, family, and mental health explored by Sarah Pinto in this visceral ethnography. Daughters of […]
