Laurence Kirmayer

 The McGILL DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY – VISITING SPEAKERS SERIES 

(with the Centre for Indigenous Conservation and Development Alternatives [CICADA] and the Centre for Society, Technology and Development [STANDD]) 

present 

Laurence Kirmayer 

James McGill Professor and Director, Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University 

“New directions in psychiatric anthropology: Cultural phenomenology, critical neuroscience, and global mental health” 

Friday, January 29, 12:30-2:00pm, Peterson Hall, Room 116, 3460 rue McTavish 

Abstract: 

This presentation will discuss three lines of recent work in psychiatric anthropology and cultural psychiatry: (1) Phenomenological psychiatry, cognitive science and ethnographic research can inform experience-near ethnographic research that aims to capture cultural variations in individuals’ illness experience. This work has led to the development of the McGill Illness Narrative Interview and the Cultural Formulation Interview in DSM-5. (2) Critical neuroscience analyses of the social interests and assumptions of current production and translation of biological knowledge in psychiatry. This has produced a critique of the NIMH RDoC program with implications for the place of ethnography in future psychiatric research. (3) Efforts to integrate ethnographic research in global mental health research lay bare some of the epistemological assumptions and political-economic constraints in current practice. Taken together, this work shows the importance of anthropology for psychiatry and the opportunities for advancing anthropological theory and application through studying mental health problems and responses.

Lunch/refreshments will be provided.

Centre for Society, Technology, and Development (STandD) 
McGill University
Peterson Hall
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