Social Psychiatry Across Cultures

This long-awaited new textbook will be of enormous value to students and teachers in cross-cultural and social psychology. The key strength of Understanding Social Psychology Across Cultures: Living and Working in a Changing World is how it illustrates the ways in which culture shapes psychological process across a wide range of social contexts. It also effectively examines the strengths and limitations of the key theories, methods and instruments used in cross-cultural research.

The World Health Organization's concept of health as "the condition of psychophysical and social well-being" must be translated into opera tional terms. The objective is to place the human person within the social system, given that mental health, mental illness, and suffering are individual, despite the fact that their causes are to be sought in the society and environment that surround and interact with the indi vidual. One dimension that must be emphasized in this field is the contin uum that exists between social environment and cerebral development. This continuum consists of the physical and biological features of the two interacting systems: on one hand, the brain managed and con trolled by the genetic program, and, on the other hand, the environ ment, be it natural or social. A simple dichotomy of individual and environment is no longer a sufficient concept in understanding the etiology of mental health and illness. Needless to say, socioepidemiological research in psychiatry and transcultural psychiatry is useful in reaching these ends. However, at the root of mental illness, one can always find the same causal elements: informational chaos, inadequate dietary intake, substance abuse, trauma, conditioning, and so on, which make the interactive systems dysfunctional. Subsequent organic and psychotic disorders occur to the detriment of both the individual and society. Current biological psychiatry is inadequately equipped in treating mental illness.

From specialists in several disciplines—psychiatry, general medicine, anthropology, sociology, and social work—the editors of this volume have assembled reports on a search for ways of identifying mentally ill people in other cultures and of determining what kinds of sociocultural factors influence the origin, course, and outcome of psychiatric disorders. The contributors have approached the subject through reviews of the literature, seminar discussions, and exploratory field studies carried out in Nova Scotia and among Eskimos, Navahos, and Mexicans. The book provides a methodological approach to important issues and problems in an area in which there is as yet only limited and uncertain knowledge. It will be useful to psychiatrists and epidemiologists working outside their own cultures, to psychologists and anthropologists, and as a handbook for specialists in mental health.

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 brilliant and engrossing work of social synthesis, replete with profound insights, opens up new vistas on the relationship between culture and mental health. The author uses his own extensive findings and his abundant knowledge of the cross-cultural studies in psychiatry, anthropology, and sociology to demonstrate that throughout history mental disorders have been closely linked with the prevailing culture and have thus changed in kind and extent. Opler's classic Culture, Psychiatry, and Human Values has here been revised and expanded to nearly twice the size of the original work. The new materials present in greater depth the author's views on the connection between culture and mental health and broaden the perspectives of theory and research on cultural change and development, the migration of acculturating populations, and the resulting shifts in diagnostic and therapeutic problems brought about by the stresses of the modern world. By enriching a survey of cultural evolution with fertile cross-cultural comparisons and a discussion of the interaction between culture and personality, Opler adds to our knowledge of the etiology and treatment of mental illnesses in primitive societies as well as among more advanced ethnic groups and subcultures in today's metropolis. Of particular significance at a time when social and community psychiatry has assumed a major role all over the world, this pioneering work is must reading not only for students of culture and personality, psychiatrists, social scientists, and workers in community health programs, but also for the educated reader concerned about these critical problems of our day.

The textbook offers comprehensive understanding of the impact of cultural factors and differences on mental illness and its treatment.