Laurence J. Kirmayer, MD, FRCPC, FCAHS, FRSC is James McGill Professor and Director, Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University. He is Editor-in-Chief of Transcultural Psychiatry, and Director of the Culture & Mental Health Research Unit at the Institute of Community and Family Psychiatry, Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, where he conducts research on culturally responsive mental health services, the mental health of indigenous peoples, and the anthropology of psychiatry. He founded and directs the annual Summer Program and Advanced Study Institute in Cultural Psychiatry at McGill. His past research includes studies on cultural consultation, pathways and barriers to mental health care for immigrants and refugees, somatization in primary care, and indigenous concepts of mental health and resilience. Current projects include: culturally based, family centered mental health promotion for Aboriginal youth; the use of cultural formulation in cultural consultation; and the place of culture in global mental health. He co-edited the volumes, Understanding Trauma: Integrating Biological, Clinical, and Cultural Perspectives (Cambridge University Press), Healing Traditions: The Mental Health of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada (University of British Columbia Press), Cultural Consultation: Encountering the Other in Mental Health Care (Springer), DSM-5 Handbook for the Cultural Formulation Interview (APPI), and Re-Visioning Psychiatry: Cultural Phenomenology, Critical Neuroscience and Global Mental Health (Cambridge). He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and of the Royal Society of Canada (Academy of Social Sciences).
Selected Publications
Adeponle, A., Whitley, R., & Kirmayer, L.J. (2012). Cultural contexts and constructions of recovery. A. Rudnick (Ed.) Recovery of People with Mental Illness: Philosophical and Related Perspectives (pp. 109-132), New York: Oxford University Press.
Aggarwal, N.K., Lam, P., Castillo, E., Weiss, M.G., Diaz, E., Alarcón, R.D., van Dijk, R., Rohlof, H., Ndetei, D.M., Scalco, M., Aguilar-Gaxiola, S., Bassiri, K., Despande, S., Groen, S., Jadhav, S. Kirmayer, L.J., Paralikar, C., Westermeyer, J., Santos, F., Vega-Dienstmaier, J., Anez, L., Boiler, M., Nicasio, A.V. & Lewis-Fernández, R. (2015). How do clinicians prefer cultural competence training? Findings from the DSM-5 Cultural Formulation Interview Field Trials. Academic Psychiatry,
Cloninger, C.R., Salvador-Carulla, L., Kirmayer, L.J., Schwartz, M.A., Appleyard, J., Goodwin, N., Groves, J. Hermans, M.H.M., Mezzich, J.E., van Staden, C.W., & Rawaf, S. . (2015). A time for action on health inequities: Foundations of the 2014 Geneva Declaration on Person- and People-centered Integrated Health Care for All. International Journal of Person Centered Medicine, 4(2): 69-89.
Gureje, O., Oladeji, B. D., Araya, R., Montgomery, A. A., Kola, L., Kirmayer, L., . . . Groleau, D. . (2015). Expanding care for perinatal women with depression (EXPONATE): study protocol for a randomized controlled trial of an intervention package for perinatal depression in primary care. BMC Psychiatry, 15, 136. doi: 10.1186/s12888-015-0537-3
Hassan, G., Ventvoegel, P., Jeffee-Bahloul, H., Barkil-Oteo, A., & Kirmayer, L.J. (2016). Mental health and psychosocial wellbeing of Syrians affect by armed conflict. Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences,
Kirmayer, L.J. (2012). Culture and context: Do human rights and mental health principles apply universally? In: M. Dudley, D. Silove & F. Gale (Eds.) Mental Health and Human Rights: Vision, Praxis and Courage (pp. 95-112), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kirmayer, L.J. (2014). Wrestling with the angels of history: Memory, symptom, and intervention. In: A. Hinton & D. Hinton (eds.) Genocide and Mass Violence: Memory, Symptom, and Recovery (pp. 388-420). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kirmayer, L. J., & Brass, G. (2016). Addressing global health disparities among Indigenous peoples. The Lancet.
Kirmayer, L.J. & Crafa, D. (2014). What kind of science for psychiatry? Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8: 435, doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00435.
Kirmayer, L.J., Lemelson, R. & Cummings, C.A. (Eds.) (2015). Re-visioning Psychiatry: Cultural Phenomenology, Critical Neuroscience and Global Mental Health, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kirmayer, L.J., & Pederson, D. (2014). Toward a new architecture for global mental health. Transcultural Psychiatry, 51(6): 759-776.
Kirmayer, L.J. & Swartz, L. (2014). Culture and global mental health. V. Patel, M. Prince, A. Cohen, & H. Minas (Eds.) Global Mental Health: Principles and Practice (pp. 44-67), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nath, Y. Paris, J., Thombs, B.D. & Kirmayer, L.J. (2012). Prevalence and social determinants of suicidal behaviors among college youth in India. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 6(3): 236-249. [epub Oct 20, 2011].
Sapkota, R.P., Gurung, D., Neupane, D., Shah, S., Kienzler, H. & Kirmayer, L.J. (2014). A village possessed by “witches”: A mixed-methods, case-control study of possession and common mental disorders in Nepal. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 38(4): 642-668.
Seligman, R., Choudhury, S. & Kirmayer, L.J. (2016). Locating culture in the brain and in the world: From social categories to the ecology of mind. In: J. Chiao, Li, S-C., Seligman, R. & Turner, R. (Eds.) Handbook of Cultural Neuroscience (pp. 3-20), New York: Oxford University Press.
