Cultural Psychiatry: A Critical Introduction (McGill Univ.). This course presents a critical introduction to theory and research in cultural psychiatry - the study of cultural influences on, and responses to, mental health problems.
Topics include: an overview of the history of cultural psychiatry; conceptual problems and research methods for studying culture and context in mental health; somatization and bodily idioms of distress; dissociation of memory and identity;
cultural variations in emotional experience; trauma and the social construction of diagnostic entities; culture and psychosis; the mental health of immigrants and refugees; the mental health of Indigenous peoples; systems of ritual and symbolic healing;
models of mental health care for culturally diverse populations; globalization and the future of cultural psychiatry.
Lecture 12 - The Future of Cultural Psychiatry
What are the forthcoming tasks for cultural psychiatry? How do we complement the focus on the biological individual with an interactional view of human problems?