Extraordinary Conditions - Culture and Experience in Mental Illness

Explores the lived experience of psychosis, trauma, and depression among people of diverse cultural orientations, revealing how mental illness engages fundamental human processes of self, desire, gender, and interpretation. This book focuses on psychological suffering and the social rendering of the mentally ill as non-human or not fully human.

List of contents

List of Figures and Tables
Prelude and Acknowledgments
 
Introduction: Culture, Mental Illness, and the Extraordinary
 
PART ONE. PSYCHOSIS, PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY, AND FAMILIES
1. Cultural Chemistry in the Clozapine Clinic
2. This Is How God Wants It? The Struggle of Sebastian
3. Emotion and Conceptions of Mental Illness: The Social Ecology of Families Living with Schizophrenia
 
PART TWO. VIOLENCE, TRAUMA, AND DEPRESSION
4. The Impress of Extremity among Salvadoran Women Refugees
5. Blood and Magic: No Hay que Creer ni Dejar de Creer
6. Trauma and Trouble in the Land of Enchantment
Conclusion: Fruits of the Extraordinary
 
Notes
Works Cited
Index

About the author

Janis H. Jenkins is a psychological/medical anthropologist at the University of California, San Diego, and an internationally recognized scholar in the field of culture and mental health.

 

Summary

Explores the lived experience of psychosis, trauma, and depression among people of diverse cultural orientations, revealing how mental illness engages fundamental human processes of self, desire, gender, and interpretation. This book focuses on psychological suffering and the social rendering of the mentally ill as non-human or not fully human.

Additional text

"Comfortably traversing the boundaries between anthropology and psychiatry, Jenkins seeks to contextualize what is known as mental illness, taking it beyond the elicitation of symptoms to broader realms of subjective meaning situated within sociocultural influences.... This book is an intellectually engaged yet passionate quest to examine these influences in lives as lived."

Product details

• Authors: Janis H. Jenkins, Jenkins Janis H.
• Publisher: University Of California Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.08.2015
• EAN: 9780520287112
• ISBN: 978-0-520-28711-2
• No. of pages: 368
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Medicine > General; Non-fiction book > Psychology, esoterics, spirituality, anthroposophy > Applied psychology; Social sciences, law, business > Ethnology > Ethnology; MEDICAL / Mental Health, PSYCHOLOGY / Personality, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, PSYCHOLOGY / Mental Health, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Human Services, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, The self, ego, identity, personality, Psychology: the self, ego, identity, personality, Mental health services, Care of the mentally ill, Social and cultural anthropology, Care of people with mental health issues