Description
Book SynopsisExplores 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.
Trade Review"This extraordinary book will be relevant to all who are interested in medical anthropology, psychiatry, and health studies... Highly recommended." CHOICE Connect "Provocative and ethnographically rich ... Her book and her arguments are of paramount importance for anthropology, psychiatry and public health as we struggle to improve care for people facing extraordinary conditions, and its encapsulation in a single volume offers an unmatched resource for teaching and research design in these areas." Ethos "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." American Anthropologist
Table of ContentsList 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
