ANTHR 2424

Culture and Mental Health: Anthropological Perspectives

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2026-2027 Catalog.

Global Mental Health is a growing and important field within the general category of Global Public Health. Anthropology has an established and long history of contributing to the debates about cross-cultural psychiatry and psychotherapy, as well as to the perennial questions of nature versus nurture in defining normal versus pathological ways of being human. Cross-cultural explanations for varied and/or universal forms of human subjectivity, affect, and personality are increasingly relevant given new research into neurological plasticity, genomics, and the dissemination and practice of evidence-based and pharmaceutically-oriented psychiatry at the expense of more holistic and culturally nuanced forms of care. We examine the efficacy of traditional and community-based mental health practices in non-Western contexts as well as the challenges to accessibile care posed by inequality and precarity, as well as the stigmas surrounding mental illness in varied cultural contexts.

Distribution Requirements (CA-AG, D-AG), (GLC-AS, SCD-AS)

Last 4 Terms Offered 2024FA, 2023FA, 2022FA, 2021FA

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