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Our Most Troubling Madness: Case Studies in Schizophrenia across Cultures / Edition 1 - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Our Most Troubling Madness: Case Studies in Schizophrenia across Cultures / Edition 1

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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 higher risk for this disease after they arrive? T. M. Luhrmann and Jocelyn Marrow argue that the root causes of schizophrenia are not only biological, but also sociocultural.
 
This book gives an intimate, personal account of those living with serious psychotic disorder in the United States, India, Africa, and Southeast Asia. It introduces the notion that social defeat—the physical or symbolic defeat of one person by another—is a core mechanism in the increased risk for psychotic illness. Furthermore, “care-as-usual” treatment as it occurs in the United States actually increases the likelihood of social defeat, while “care-as-usual” treatment in a country like India diminishes it.

ISBN-13: 9780520291096

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: University of California Press

Publication Date: 09-27-2016

Pages: 304

Product Dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

Series: Ethnographic Studies in Subjectivity #11

T. M. Luhrmann is Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University. She is the author of When God Talks Back, Of Two Minds, and Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft. Jocelyn Marrow is a cultural anthropologist and Senior Study Director at Westat in Rockville, Maryland.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Foreword Kim Hopper xi

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction T.M. Luhrmann 1

1 "I'm Schizophrenic!": How Diagnosis Can Change Identity in the United States T.M. Luhrmann 27

2 Diagnostic Neutrality in Psychiatric Treatment in North India Amy June Sousa 40

3 Vulnerable Transitions in a World of Kin: In the Shadow of Good Wifeliness in North India Jocelyn Marrow 56

4 Work and Respect in Chennai Giulia Mazza 71

5 Racism and Immigration: An African-Caribbean Woman in London Johanne Eliacin 86

6 Voices That Are More Benign: The Experience of Auditory Hallucinations in Chennai T.M. Luhrmann R. Padmavati 99

7 Demonic Voices: One Man's Experience of God, Witches, and Psychosis in Accra, Ghana Damien Droney 113

8 Madness Experienced as Faith: Temple Healing in North India Anubha Sood 127

9 Faith Interpreted as Madness: Religion, Poverty, and Psychiatry in the Life of a Romanian Woman Jack R. Friedman 139

10 The Culture of the Institutional Circuit in the United States T.M. Luhrmann 153

11 Return to Baseline: A Woman with Acute-Onset, Non-affective Remitting Psychosis in Thailand Julia Cassaniti 167

12 A Fragile Recovery in the United States Neely A. L. Myers 180

Conclusion Jocelyn Marrow T. M. Luhrmann 197

Notes 223

Bibliography 241

Contributors 265

Index 269