Author: nusaibasc

Interview with Soha Bayoumi

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Soha Bayoumi is a Senior Lecturer in the Medicine, Science, and the Humanities Program at the Johns Hopkins University. She is presently completing two book projects, one (with Sherine Hamdy) on the work of doctors in the Egyptian uprising, and the other on the social and political roles of doctors in relation to health and justice in postcolonial Egypt. 

What is your article “Nationalism, Authoritarianism, and Medical Mobilization in Post-revolutionary Egypt” about?

This article explores the links between medical practice and expertise, on the one hand, and nationalist discourses, on the other, in the context of the 2011 Egyptian uprising and the years that followed, which witnessed a consolidation of political authoritarianism. It investigates how doctors played a significant role in countering political regimes’ acts of violence and denial. It traces the trajectory of the doctors’ mobilization in the 2011 uprising and beyond and demonstrates how the doctors drew on their professional expertise and nationalist sentiment in their struggles against a hypernationalistic military state. It contrasts activist doctors’ idea of nationalism with the state’s and shows how medicine has served as a site of awakening, conversion narratives, and building of bridges in a polarized society where the doctors were able to rely on their “neutral” expertise to present themselves as reliable witnesses, narrators, and actors.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.

I work at the intersection of the history of medicine, science and technology studies, and political theory. My work is informed by postcolonial studies, gender studies, and social justice, and centers the ways in which medical expertise is shaped by and deployed in different political contexts.

What drew you to this project?

This research is part of a book-length project that I have been working on for the good part of the last decade with Sherine Hamdy. We were both amazed and intrigued by the different roles played by doctors in the Egyptian uprising and its aftermath and felt compelled to document that episode of the Egyptian revolution and ask questions related to what motivates doctors to engage in politics, especially during such volatile political moments.  

What was one of the most interesting findings?

We were really struck by how doctors reliance on their “neutral” expertise and their attempts to efface the political in their work actually reinscribe the political in different ways, in ways that both allow doctors to either resist state violence or abet it.

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now?

I’m currently watching the Netflix show, Mo, which is, as far as I know, the first mainstream show about a Palestinian-American to ever make it to streaming screens in the US. I’m reading Oliver Sacks’ first memoir, A Leg to Stand On, which is focused on an accident that caused him to lose the use of one of his legs and his reflections on being patient, after a long career of being a doctor. And I’ve just finished listening to the audiobook, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, by Trevor Noah. I love Trevor Noah’s style of comedy, and I think his autobiography book, which contains a lot of comedy, is best enjoyed performed by Noah himself.

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

I think it is the idea that very few things in life are actually politically “neutral”—that what we take for granted as apolitical or technical or neutral has so many ramifications on politics, writ large. Many of the daily actions we take and the statements we make are inscribed in a political context and often function to reproduce and perpetuate that context or to subvert and change it, if we so choose.

Thank you for your time!

Other places to connect:
Website
Twitter
LinkedIn
Academia.edu

Interview With Lamia Moghnieh

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Lamia Moghnieh (Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Copenhagen) is an anthropologist and mental health practitioner. Her research looks at the impact of psychiatry on understandings of self and illness in postcolonial and postconflict societies of the MENA/SWANA. She is interested in exploring the relationship between psychiatry and subject formation in the context of global mental health and patient subjectivities.

What is your article “The Broken Promise of Institutional Psychiatry: Sexuality, Women and Mental Illness in 1950s Lebanon” about?

I am an anthropologist, psychologist, and a social worker, and more recently, I am also a patient of analytical therapy. I try to let my research be informed from all of these positionalities together or provide insights from all of these places (as a researcher, practitioner and from the more intimate and vulnerable position of being a patient). I work in the field of mental health, and I do research on the histories and ethnographies of psychiatry, tracing various discourses on mental health from the Middle East and North Africa/ Southwest Asia and North Africa). I am currently writing my book manuscript provisionally entitled “Psychiatric Afterlives: Narrating Illness, Gender and Violence in Lebanon”. The book builds on multi-disciplinary frameworks from medical humanities to examine the role of psychiatric expertise in shaping patient and social imaginaries of madness and violence in Lebanon.

What drew you to this project?

I always wanted to be a clinical psychologist until I enrolled in the MAPSS program (Masters’ in the Social Sciences) at the university of Chicago. There, I was introduced to the various historical, philosophical and political critiques of psychology and I was drawn to medical anthropology. After I finished my PhD, which focused on trauma, humanitarianism and the politics of suffering in Lebanon, I was interested in learning more about the history of psychiatry in Lebanon and the region. My background and research interests are interdisciplinary. I am lucky to be in an academic position (at the upcoming research center “Culture and the Mind” head by Ana Antić at the University of Copenhagen) that welcomes and values this interdisciplinarity in the study of psy disciplines.

What was one of the most interesting findings?

One of the findings that interest me is the ways in which the family acts as an equal diagnoser of mental illness to psychiatric expertise. As shown in the article, the story of Hala invites more attention to the ways in which women (and maybe non-normative persons) become chronically institutionalized by institutional psychiatry and the family. This is not to dismiss the psychological and financial effects that mental illness might have on family members. The article rather approaches the family as a sociological unit that governs and defines normality, and is interested in the dialogue, tensions and challenges of care and normality between the family and institutional psychiatry, as shown in the story of Hala.

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now?

Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
Roberto Bolaño’s Cowboy Graves
سارة اب وغزال “احلمي يا سيدي
هلال شومان “حزن في قلبي
Couch Fiction: A Graphic Tale of Psychotherapy
Jonathan Sadowsky’s Empire of Depression: A New History

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

That psychiatry is both a form of governance and a mode of healing whose authority and reach transforms and changes over time. That patient voices and narratives are a crucial part of the history of psychiatry and of its contemporary practices. And that medical humanities, including anthropology, is a field that can offer useful and critical insights on the status of global mental health.

Other places to connect:
Website
Twitter
LinkedIn

Interview with Michael Galvin

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Dr. Michael Galvin is a Global Psychiatry Clinical Research Fellow and in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard University and the Department of Psychiatry at Boston University. Dr. Michael Galvin is a global health researcher and psychotherapist.  His primary research interests center on mental health and the role that one’s environment, culture, and belief systems play in mental illness and treatment.  In particular, his work focuses on elucidating cultural models of mental illness and exploring relationships to pathways to care, with the goal of improving cultural adaptation of mental health interventions.  

What is your article “Examining the Etiology and Treatment of Mental Illness Among Vodou Priests in Northern Haiti“ about?

This article is about the way that traditional healers (ougan) conceptualize and treat mental illness in rural Northern Haiti.  While the vast majority of people with mental illness seek treatment from ougan in this region – as few biomedical services exist – very little research has examined what ougan actually do when treating patients.  The article also tries to understand how mental illness is viewed from the healer’s perspective, delving into the broader Vodou cosmology which remains very influential in rural parts of Haiti.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.

My interests mostly center around mental illness and how we conceptualize it in different cultures and settings.  Historically, mental illness has always been hard for people to understand, getting wrapped up in ideas of spirit and demon possession.  Rarely have people thought it was something to treat like a broken leg or even a bacterial infection.  This is partly because there are no biomarkers to test for it thus patients recount what they are experiencing solely via self-report.  But it’s also because mental illness affects the basic ways in which people act and simply exist in the world.  When our loved ones have significant behavioral changes without physical symptoms of illness or infection it can often lead us to suspect the supernatural.

What drew you to this project?

I have been working and living in Haiti on and off since 2012 and knew I wanted to focus my dissertation research in Cap-Haïtien.  I found out about the Mental Health Center at Morne Pelé in 2018 and spent the entire summer of 2019 volunteering with them so we could get to know each other, for me to better understand what their work was like, and to start exploring different angles for my dissertation research which I conducted in the second half of 2020.  It was during the summer of 2019 that I learned about the extent to which patients held explanatory models based in Vodou and I knew that had to become a significant part of my research there.  I’m currently the director of the Mental Health Center at Morne Pelé’s new Research Laboratory so it’s very exciting to continue to collaborate together.

What was one of the most interesting findings?

One of the most interesting findings was this treatment called fiksyon that almost all the healers I interviewed used.  Barely anything has been written about these concoctions so this was really one of the first times they’ve been explored.  Fiksyon are different liquids – usually rum mixed with ground plants and animals – that are kept in large unmarked semi-transparent plastic bottles.  There’s a lot of mystery surrounding fiksyon with many people saying they have mystical properties.  It would be interesting to explore more about what is actually in them and the places where they are manufactured

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now?

I’m reading a really interesting book that was written in the 1970s called Plagues and Peoples.  It’s a great dive into the history of pandemics over the centuries.  It’s not a hard read at all, very enjoyable and easy to understand with lots of nice anecdotes.  Apparently the findings have held up really well over the last 50 years too.

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

That religion and culture have deep impacts in the way we conceive of mental illness.  That we still know relatively little about how mental illness develops, manifests, and is best treated.  That the relationship between our minds and our bodies is exceedingly complex and there are often no easy solutions.

Thank you for your time!


Interview with Katarzyna Szmigiero

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Katarzyna Szmigiero is a graduate of the University of Łódź, Poland. She is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Literary Studies and Linguistics of the of University of Jan Kochanowski, Poland (Branch in Piotrków Trybunalski). Her research interests concentrate on medical humanities, especially cultural representations of psychiatry and gender, and genre fiction.

What is your article ““We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes:” Representations of Insanity in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock“ about?

The article deals with the way motifs connected with psychiatry (doctors/treatment/people diagnosed with mental illness or individuals displaying disturbing behavior/attitudes to mental psychopathology) are used in the films of Alfred Hitchcock. First of all, it tries to answer the questions why the director so often presented mentally unstable characters in his works. It also looks at how Hitchcock gently questioned the assumptions about mental illnesses and its origins that were dominant in his times. Finally, it briefly mentions the legacy of Hitchcock if the cinematic portrayals of insanity are concerned.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.

I am interested in cultural representations of madness, gender studies, and popular literature.

What drew you to this project?

I have always loved Hitchcock’s films and saw Frenzy in my early teens, as it was my dad’s favourite. It was one of the most unpleasant and, simultaneously, hilarious film I have ever seen since.

What was one of the most interesting findings?

On the surface, Hitchcock appears to be following the psychoanalytic approach, especially in his American movies. However, he always undermines the official discourse on madness, proving that we are all, sometimes, a little mad and there’s nothing wrong about it.

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now?

I am currently an avid reader of the retellings of the Medusa myth (as well as other chick lit fantasy books about antiquity).

Watch Hitchcock! Old films may seem dated, especially if you are not used to them. But his dialogues, designs, cast is often genius.

Thank you for your time!


Interview with Clare Killikelly

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Dr. Clare Killikelly is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, and Department of Psychology, University of Zurich. Dr. Kilikelly’s research group examines the clinical utility and global applicability of the new Prolonged Grief Disorder. Her research seeks to better understand the nature of suffering and distress in different communities to develop accessible and culturally informed assessments and interventions.

What is your article “The New ICD-11 Prolonged Grief Disorder Guidelines in Japan: Findings and Implications from Key Informant Interviews” about?

Symptoms of mental disorder, including grief reactions, are found to differ across cultures. There are several examples where misdiagnosis of mental disorders, treatment gaps, and reduced help seeking occurs when culturally sensitive assessments are lacking. The identification of culturally unique symptoms of grief can improve the validity of mental health assessment.

We are the first to explore PGD symptoms in Japan from the perspective of frontline health care workers. We conducted in depth key informant interviews with cultural brokers (e.g. individuals who are part of the health care system but also have lived experience of the cultural group).

We had two main aims: first to explore experiences of grief to define both normal and abnormal reactions. Secondly, we assessed the acceptability of the ICD-11 guidelines to identify areas where cultural information is lacking. This would provide a unique viewpoint that is often overlooked in larger qualitative studies.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.

I am interested in the role of culture in the presentation and treatment of mental health disorders. I believe that there may be cultural concepts that when unlocked can provide a key to better therapeutic outcomes.

After completing a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, UK, I became interested in the core cognitive processes underlying psychopathology and the development of targeted psychotherapeutic interventions. I completed a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, UK and explored the use of innovative mobile technologies to improve the acceptability and efficacy of therapeutic interventions for people with psychosis. Working as a psychologist with refugees in South London I became interested in the different cultural experiences and presentations of distress.

Currently, I have been awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Post-Doc Mobility grant to work at the University of British Columbia to examine the relationship between grief, indicators of mental health and post migration living difficulties in refugees in Canada in comparison with Swiss, Dutch and German cultural contexts.

If you are interested in learning more about this research project, or possibly participating please check out the website.

What drew you to this project?

Prolonged grief disorder is the only mental disorder where people are expected to suffer. However, the intensity and duration of this suffering is bound by different cultural norms. For example, in German speaking countries it is common to observe a Trauerjahr (year of mourning) whereas in Syria there are 40 days of mourning. The new ICD-11 definition of PGD states that individuals must experience intense and prolonged symptoms of grief for over 6 months. Although there is robust research evidence that supports this time criteria in the Global North (e.g. North America and Europe), the current definition of PGD may be missing key symptom items and features that are more representative in different cultures.

Ultimately, we would like to develop a catalogue of culture concepts of distress (CCD) that could be accessed worldwide to help clinicians more accurately assess and diagnose PGD in different cultural groups.

What was one of the most interesting findings?

Part of the analysis focused on establishing common grief symptoms for disordered grief in Japanese bereaved. Participants described a range of emotional responses that are associated with both normal and abnormal grief responses. One unique emotional response was identified related to sadness: The sense of loss was described using a metaphor for distress ‘as a hole opening up inside the kokoro (heart).’

The in-depth qualitative analysis provided insight for clinical application, for example, due to

prominent values of emotional control, stigma towards mental illness, or lack of somatic items in the assessment measure, PGD may be underestimated in Japanese culture with the current ICD-11 PGD guidelines.

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now?

I am currently re-reading ‘Snow Falling on Cedars’ by David Guterson which takes place on the islands neighbouring Vancouver and UBC. It is an excellent book but a harrowing story about the Japanese internment camps during World War II. This is also an often overlooked part of Canadian history.

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

We were able to identify new symptoms that are very relevant for the Japanese context that are currently missing from the ICD-11 PGD definition. For example, somatic symptoms are robustly endorsed in the Japanese context, however, these are largely missing from the PGD ICD-11 definition. On the other hand, yearning and longing for the deceased (a core symptom of PGD ICD-11) is considered a normal and encouraged process, related to the emphasis on continuous bonds. Clinicians will need to consider these possible cultural differences before diagnosing PGD in the Japanese context. Considering the deeper beliefs and values of a culture and how this may impact on the assessment of grief is of great importance.

Thank you for your time!

Other places to connect:
Website
International Counseling
LinkedIn

Interview with Sarah Rubin and Joselyn Hines

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Sarah Rubin
Joselyn Hines

Sarah Rubin is an Associate Professor at the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine at the Cleveland campus. She is a medical anthropologist who studies motherhood in the US and South Africa. She’s an advocate for health equity and reproductive justice. She lives in rural northeast Ohio with her family.

Joselyn Hines is a fourth-year medical student at the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine at the Cleveland campus and psychiatry residency applicant. She has held many leadership positions within her medical school and local community. She is an active advocate and leader for underrepresented minority medical students and marginalized patient populations. She is passionate about destigmatizing mental illnesses and connecting the community to proper psychiatric care.

What is your article “As Long as I Got a Breath in My Body’’: Risk and Resistance in Black Maternal Embodiments” about?

This article explores the everyday experiences of Black mothers in Cleveland, OH as they navigate pregnancy and postpartum in the context of the racially disparate risk of infant death due to structural racism. These mothers articulated awareness of ways that racism causes them stress as they strive to have a healthy pregnancy and birth and raise their children well. We describe an embodied orientation toward motherhood that we call “betterment” where women attempt to overcome the disadvantages and oppressions of structural racism by centering their children, reconsidering and reconfiguring the social support they need to raise them, and by focusing on the future.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.

Rubin: I’ve always been fascinated by reproduction and motherhood and understanding “what it’s like” to mother in different contexts and circumstances. I work with mothers in South Africa as well as the US.  Ethnography is my favorite way of engaging in research, but I also enjoy the breadth and multidimensionality of interdisciplinary collaborations. My favorite way to do research, though, is by engaging and mentoring students.

Hines: I am passionate about research on chronic stress in Black woman and its impact on the maternal and infant mortality health disparity in Cleveland, Ohio. I am interested in women’s mental health, reproductive psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry.

What drew you to this project?

Rubin: When I learned about the great racial disparity in infant mortality around our campus in Cleveland, OH and the role of chronic stress in creating and maintaining that disparity, I wondered what it looked like and felt like to mother under those conditions. We started with that phenomenological question, and it led us to an understanding of how structural racism is experienced and resisted by Black mothers.

Hines: Black women’s voices are often silenced and objectified in medicine. This project amplifies the voices and stories of Black women and sheds light on the struggles and obstacles that black women face and overcome to successfully parent.

What was one of the most interesting findings?

The Black mothers in our study demonstrate a love and commitment to their children that defy pathologizing discourses like “Welfare Queen;” but they also disrupt the positive trope of the “Superstrong Black mother,” which renders invisible the hardship and grief of living and mothering in a racist society. Our findings forge a middle path by showing how Black mothers’ bodies are shaped by the chronic stressors of structural racism but are also a source of resistance, especially in service to their children.

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now?

Rubin: I’m reading Birthing Black Mothers by Jennifer C Nash. It’s a fascinating analysis of “Black motherhood” as a political symbol. It’s prompting me to reconsider my own analysis of Black motherhood, and also my positionality as a scholar. I’m also watching Season 10 of the Great British Baking Show. It’s a hug, nap, and cup of tea all rolled into one flaky pie crust. A working mother’s salve.

Hines: The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

Rubin: Listen to Black Mothers!

Hines: This project shows how social determinants of health are lived and embodied by vulnerable populations. Readers can use this information to better understand their perspective, provide holistic quality care, and to better advocate for systemic changes in society that can ultimately provide better health outcomes for and save the lives of Black mothers and babies.

Thank you for your time!

Other ways to connect:
Twitter: Sarah Rubin | Joselyn Hines
LinkedIn: Sarah Rubin
Other applicable website: Sarah Rubin

Interview with Anaïs Ogrizek

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Anaïs Ogrizek is a psychiatrist, M.D, Ph.D and Fellow in Child an Adolescent Psychiatry at the Cohin Hospital in Paris, France. She received her MD at Paris V University and did her residency in Psychiatry at the University Hospitals of French West Indies, and holds a Master’s degree in Transcultural Psychology from Paris XIII University. She focuses her research on often overlooked communities of vulnerable populations in order to raise the scientific community’s concern on their condition and suggest ways to improve them.

What is your article “The Cultural Hybridization of Mothering in French Prison Nurseries: A Qualitative Study about?

My article is about how women incarcerated during pregnancy or along with their babies in French prison nurseries are being deprived from their original cultural environment. They go through a process close to creolization regarding their maternal cultural habits, with in the end the emergence of a specific hybrid culture around motherhood, even though they gather multiple factors of vulnerability for full prisonization, as a form of forced assimilation to prison culture. The results originate from a qualitative study led in 13 different prison nurseries in France: 25 mothers and 5 pregnant women were interviewed and interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to explore the data.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.

Passionate about traveling, I became interested in transcultural psychiatry early on in my career. After a successful education some of which was spent in London and New York, I decided to pursue my medical studies at Paris V Descartes University in France. During my six years of study there I completed internships in both India and Canada, as well as a one-year Erasmus exchange in Hungary. After completing my general medical curriculum, I decided to specialize in psychiatry and travelled to French overseas territories to complete my residency. In French Guyana I took part in child psychiatric missions in Amerindian villages and worked in general psychiatry in Martinique.

Following my return to Paris, I achieved a master’s degree in transcultural psychology before completing a PhD research in psychology on the theme of the “motherhood in prison”, with a specific focus on cultural traditions around motherhood. Since then, I have been taking on a fellowship training program in Child and Adolescent psychiatry at the Maison de Solenn, Cochin Hospital in Paris, known worldwide as a place of expertise in transcultural psychiatry.

I am currently working on mothers that have left prison with their children after spending some time with them in prison nurseries, in order to explore how they readjust to their lives as free mothers on every level (on personal and domestic ones as well as social and cultural ones of course). On cultural aspects, our main hypothesis based on our prior results is that the cultural gap created by prison between these women and their outside community regarding traditions around motherhood could lead, at their release, to issues similar to those faced by migrant mothers: they might become migrant mothers from an inner to an outside prison world.

Based on my prior results of motherhood in prison nurseries, I am also working on a new and more general concept of “the baby function” – as a parallel to the term of “maternal function” commonly used – in the sense of what the baby can offer to his mother, or at contrariwise what he fails to offer. I intend to develop this innovative concept in a future article.

What drew you to this project?

I have always found the carceral environment very intriguing, with often multiple entanglements with psychiatric problematics, regarding the endorsement of responsibility for one’s personal action but also regarding institutional organization that have been put forward by the emblematic Goffman in his book “Asylums”. When I randomly discovered that babies were born and raised by their mothers in such an institution I immediately wanted to know more about these mothers’ experience as it aroused so many questions regarding so many different fields of research: personal, domestic, social, cultural, judicial, and ethical.

What was one of the most interesting findings?

The most interesting finding was to observe that no matter where in France these mothers were incarcerated (Metropolitan France or French oversea territory), they all seemed to show a similar cultural hybridization to some kind of ‘‘motherhood prison culture’’ regarding motherhood habits.

I am currently reading the thrilling work by Orna Donarth “Regretting Motherhood: a study” I recently watched and loved “Woman” a film by Anastasia Mikova, and Yann Arthus-Bertrand. I also very much enjoyed Yann Arthus-Bertand’s previous film “Human”.

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now?

I am currently re-reading ‘Snow Falling on Cedars’ by David Guterson which takes place on the islands neighbouring Vancouver and UBC. It is an excellent book but a harrowing story about the Japanese internment camps during World War II. This is also an often overlooked part of Canadian history.

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

I would say that this work shows once again how culture is a fundamental need for every human being, and how no matter how hard an ethnic group is oppressed, he will put all its strength in making some of its culture survive in some way or another.

Thank you for your time!

Other places to connect:
LinkedIn

Interview with Katyayni

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Katyayni is a PhD Candidate at Brown University and has been researching and writing about health and healthcare since 2009. They are currently studying how families and healthcare professionals in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) take care of children who experience seizures.

What is your article “Artifacts of Care: The Collection of Medical Records by Families in North India” about?

When a child in India suffers from a chronic illness, families are responsible for collecting and keeping the prescriptions and reports that doctor’s might use to understand the child’s medical and treatment history. In my article, I try to understand this form of documentation and recordkeeping.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.   

I developed an interest in studying illness after I spent a few days as a patient in a government hospital in New Delhi. In my senior year at Colby College, a course on Historical Epidemiology taught by Dr. James L.A. Webb Jr. guided me towards the study of public health. After post-graduate studies on the subject at the Harvard School of Public Health, I worked as a researcher with the World Bank Group in India, learning about the planning and implementation of public health programs in the country. I decided to pursue a PhD in Anthropology because I was drawn to ethnography as a research method and was inspired by the writings of Lawrence Cohen and Sarah Pinto on UP.

What drew you to this project?

I wanted to study the provision of medical care in western UP. I am from Meerut, a city in the region and through my research wanted to understand an aspect of life in the region. My supervisor, Dr. Bhrigupati Singh, encouraged me to focus my research on a particular disease condition or type of practitioner. I chose seizures among children because a colleague had once shared with me their experience of meeting a child in eastern UP who suffered from seizures and had been given a poor prognosis by their doctor. Hearing my colleague’s thoughts on the child’s condition and their family’s ability to care for them made me want to understand how seizures among children are understood and treated in UP.

What was one of the most interesting findings?

This research is ongoing and so my findings are currently half-baked. Nevertheless, one aspect of caring for children with seizures that I have found noteworthy is the role of repetition in both familial and medical care practices. I am pursuing this line of inquiry to consider how the repetitiveness of multiple actions (for instance giving a child their daily medications, taking them for monthly medical consultations) coalesces into what we might call caregiving.

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now?

I recently found the book, Here, by the illustrator Richard McGuire on my sister, deepani’s, bookshelf. And a good friend, the geographer Matthew Birkinshaw, gifted me the book, Deceptive Majority: Dalits, Hindus and Underground Religion, by the anthropologist Dr. Joel Lee. Both these books illustrate how intricate and multilayered histories can be told in ways that do not overwhelm their readers. I have enjoyed them very much.

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

Through my work on medical documents I hope to have reiterated the value of studying materials that accompany the practices we want to understand.

Thank you for your time!

Interview with James B. Waldram

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Jim Waldram is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Saksatchewan. A canadian anthropologist with specializations in applied and medical anthropology, he obtained his PhD from the University of Connecticut in 1983, after completing Bachelor’s (University of Waterloo) and Master’s (University of Manitoba) degrees in Canada. He is the author of several books, including Hound Pound Narrative: Sexual Offender Habilitation and the Anthropology of Therapeutic Intervention (2012, University of California Press) and An Imperative to Cure: Principles and Practice of Q’eqchi’ Maya Medicine in Belize (2020, University of New Mexico Press). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Anthropology Society, and the Society for Applied Anthropology.

What is your article “Does “Susto” Really Exist? Indigenous Knowledge and Fright Disorders Among Q’eqchi’ Maya in Belize” about?

This article examines the knowledge held by a group of Indigenous people – the Q’eqchi’ Maya of Belize – with respect to fright-related disorders. It challenges the idea that one particular fright disorder, known as susto, is essentially the same everywhere. Susto is well documented in cultural psychiatry, and the term appears in major psychiatric textbooks. But it appears to be an overlay of Indigenous knowledge by western psychiatric researchers, with the result that the complexities and nuances of Indigenous fright disorders are rendered invisible. This article takes that Indigenous knowledge seriously and uses it to talk back to susto, to question the rote applicability to Indigenous peoples of this particular western conceptualization of disorder.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests. 

I live in Saskatchewan, Canada, known for bright sunshine and long,hot summer nights, as well as cold, dark winters. So, researching in Belize is very nice! I have been working with a group of Q’eqchi medical practitioners, and their patients, for almost twenty years. I am intrigued by the concept of ‘healing’ and much of my work has examined therapeutic practice in settings such as northern Indigenous communities, prisons, clinics, and now southern Belizian Q’eqchi’ villages.  

What drew you to this project? 

I was invited by the Q’eqchi’ medical practitioners to research, document, and share their medical practice and knowledge, in response to efforts by evangelicals and others to paint them as satanic or charlatans.

What was one of the most interesting findings?

I had a notion of ‘healing’ as fundamentally about repairing social relationships and psychological harms, based on my work with Indigenous groups in Canada. I was surprised to find that the Q’eqchi’ medical practitioners – who some would refer to as ‘healers’ – are focused mostly on diagnosing and treating medical conditions and seeking a cure for their patients.

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now?

I don’t have much time for reading outside of my scholarly pursuits and teaching. I do listen to blues music regularly, and I watch a great deal of football (Canadian style).

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

It is imperative to take seriously the deep and complex knowledge of Indigenous peoples and allow their understandings and explanations to exist equally alongside those of western science. 

Thank you for your time!

Other places to connect:
Website
Twitter

Interview With Sarah G. Mars

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The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Sarah Mars is an Associate Professional Researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. She is an anthropologist and historian who has been researching substance use and policy for several decades. Her current research focus is the US opioid/overdose epidemic and she is the author of The Politics of Addiction: Medical Conflict and Drug Dependence in England since the 1960s (Palgrave).

What is your article ‘The High Five Club’: Social relations and perspectives on HIV-related stigma during an HIV outbreak in West Virginia‘ about?

During our qualitative research in a West Virginia town where an outbreak of HIV was happening, we found strong agreement among people injecting drugs that HIV-related stigma had greatly diminished among their peers since the outbreak. Using Cultural Theory we considered the social and material mechanisms that might underlie this change. West Virginia’s drug overdose death rates are the highest in the US amidst widespread uptake of injecting. Although spending time together, people living homeless and injecting drugs were divided and constrained by extreme poverty and the demands of drug dependence, fostering a fatalistic approach to life events and decision-making. This fatalism undermined individuals’ aspirations to forming a mutually supportive group, the “High Five Club” of the title. (The name is an ingenious pun for ‘HIV’ where the V=5 in Roman numerals.) Yet this fatalism also contributed to mutual tolerance and acceptance of those diagnosed with HIV.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.

Substance use and the social and political responses to it have long interested me. I moved to San Francisco from London almost two decades ago and, as a migrant, find that a comparative perspective always helps to spark questions about what we are encountering out in the field or in archives. While some of my research has focused on the urgent questions of emerging drug use during the opioid epidemic, I am also interested in developing under-used theoretical approaches, particularly Cultural Theory. The new online Opioid Industry Document Archive also promises exciting new opportunities for research.  As well as work and family, I have spent many years researching cake making, particularly the chocolate varieties.

What drew you to this project?

Since reading Mary Douglas’ paper ‘The Self as Risk Taker: A Cultural Theory of Contagion in Relation to AIDS’ (1990), I have been intrigued about perceptions of risk and protection from HIV.  During research in Baltimore, Maryland in 2015, an interviewee commented that although they were engaged in sex work, they only went in their own circle. They saw this boundary as protective against HIV risk and it resonated with Douglas’ ideas about community boundaries as a protective barrier to contagion. I then developed this project as a pilot for investigating the use of Cultural Theory among people who use drugs

What was one of the most interesting findings?

Reducing HIV-related stigma is not only a matter of educating people to be more caring and empathetic. How someone reacts to another’s diagnosis depends on how they see their own place in the world. When unable to control key aspects of their lives, such as where they sleep at night or because of the daily demands of drug dependence, a person may develop a fatalistic viewpoint. From a public health point of view, fatalism can make preventing HIV particularly challenging if people who are considered ‘at risk’ believe the spread of the virus is out of their hands but fatalism may also help them to live in harsh conditions without self-blame and reconcile themselves to difficult news.

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now?

I have been enjoying the BBC podcast of ‘In Our Time’, a discussion with academics of wildly disparate topics from the electron to the origins of the Atlantis myth or George Orwell’s 1984. For viewing, Shetland, a crime drama set on remote Scottish islands, is good for relaxing at the end of the day. For the written word, I recently read an excellent paper by Allison Schlosser and Lee Hoffer that discusses grief after deaths from drug overdose, a previously overlooked subject. (Schlosser, A. V., & Hoffer, L. D. (2022). “I don’t go to funerals anymore”: how people who use opioids grieve drug-related death in the US overdose epidemic. Harm Reduction Journal, 19(1), 1-11.)

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

There is usually an internal logic to even the most bewildering human behavior but it may take some persistence to discover it.

Other places to connect:
University of California, San Francisco
ResearchGate