Module ANTH45415: ADVANCED ANTHROPOLOGY OF MENTAL HEALTH & ILLNESS

Department: Anthropology

ANTH45415: ADVANCED ANTHROPOLOGY OF MENTAL HEALTH & ILLNESS

Pre-requisites

Corequisites

Excluded Combinations

Aims

• This course aims to study the related issues of mental health, illness, intervention and use of psychotropic substances from a cross-cultural perspective.

Content

• Anthropological approaches to personality and consciousness.
• Mental health and mental illness, a continuum?
• Colonial psychiatry, ethnopsychiatry and cross-cultural psychiatry.
• Culture-bound syndromes — from exoticism to global phenomena.
• Current biomedical approaches to mental illness - typologies and disorders in DSM.
• Race and psychiatry.
• Healing cultures. Therapeutic institutions in a comparative perspective. Dreaming in human societies.
• Cultural conceptualization of the ‘unconscious’.
• Shamanism, spirit possession, and spiritual healing. Trance and altered states of consciousness
• Concepts of mental health and mental illness among the Semai/Senoi.
• Sacramental, recreational and therapeutic use of substances. Ethnobotany. Drugs, licit and illicit.
• Trauma, combat trauma and PTSD.
• Neuropharmacology. Depression and bipolar disorders

Learning Outcomes

• Students will gain an understanding of the interrelationship between different cultural conceptualisations of self and consciousness, what constitutes sanity and madness in different contexts and their associated historical and current healing practices. Gain knowledge of and insight into the Western psychiatric approach and classifications of mental disorders, their treatment and their social implications in the different contexts. Gain an appreciation of an anthropological critical approach to understanding issues of mental health and mental illness in a cross-cultural perspective. Gain an understanding of the cultural, political, economic, biological and pharmacological aspects of using psychotropic substances and drugs from a cross-cultural perspective.

• Apply key concepts and methods of medical anthropology in relation to mental health issues.
• Read and understand key medical anthropological texts in mental health matters.
• Gain insight into the cross-cultural use of substances.

• Communication: The formative assessment is a group-based presentation which develops communication skills in the group context.
• Cross-cultural sensitivity: The module's focus on, in part, non-Western cultures' experience of self, mental health issues and drug use, generates an appreciation of other cultures’ world views and experiential life worlds with respect to these topics.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Lectures
• Tutorials
• Coursework

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment

500 Word essay plan Verbal feedback on seminar presentations