Mental Health and Psychiatric Medicine
Anthropologists and cross-cultural psychiatrists have examined mental health in cross-cultural contexts by documenting not only symptoms and treatment, but also idioms of distress, culture-bound syndromes, and meanings attributed to brain and mind dysfunction. Anthropologists have explored the intersection of social suffering and individual mental illness. Others in the field have critiqued how behavior becomes labeled and often stigmatized as mental illness in psychiatric practice in Western, high-income countries. Cross-cultural psychiatrists typically have incorporated this information into developing community and clinic-based treatment approaches for refugees and immigrants. Increasingly, anthropologists and cross-cultural psychiatrists have examined how psychiatry is applied in low- and middle-income countries in the movement for global mental health.
