Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Explores social, cultural, economic and political underpinnings of mental distress and medical practices. Topics include somatization, medicalization, psychologization, global inequities, local desires, and the use of mental illness and psychology by states and institutions as technologies of governing. Attention given to how Indigenous psychology challenges universal claims of Euro-American psychology. Students who have taken SA 359 under the title "Culture, Mental Health, and Therapeutic Governance" in Fall 2017, Fall 2019, or Fall 2020 may not take this course further credit.

COURSE DETAILS:

The course familiarizes students with the social, cultural, economic and political underpinnings of mental distress and psycho-medical practices in societies throughout the world.

Mental and emotional distress involves more than psychobiological dysfunction. They are also produced by broader forces, including the political economy, history, and social hierarchies of particular groups. The course covers major and moderate psychiatric disorders and psychological and emotional disorders and their treatment as well as the use of mental illness and psychology by states and institutions as technologies to govern the population and social life. It also highlights the global Indigenous Psychology movement to challenge or decolonize the universal values and principles associated with Euro-American psychology and the mainstream biomedical paradigm in treating mental distress. It examines topics such as decolonization, somatization, medicalization, psychologization, global inequities, local desires, and modern plagues. While evidence points to the universality of mental conditions like schizophrenia, culture shapes how people experience, and respond to, mental illnesses. The course pays particular attention to “culture.” We explore the various ways in which “culture” shapes illnesses and “culture” is used in discourses on health. Readings are drawn from indigenous psychology, cultural psychology, and psychological/psychiatric anthropology that emphasize the centrality of culture in understanding psychopathology, as well as from clinical, community, and counseling psychology that focus on therapeutic practice with individuals from diverse socio-cultural groups (based on gender, class, race or sexual orientation). The course offers students interdisciplinary perspectives on culture, psychopathology, and therapeutic governance. 

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to achieve the following:

1. Ethnographic research methodology
2. ethnographic sensibility
3. skills for critical thinking/analysis/writing
4. professional communication/presentation
5. collaborative competency
6. synthesis/application

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: