Presentation Information
[SY-109-04]The Future of Cultural Psychiatry: An Ecosocial Systems View
*Laurence J Kirmayer (McGill University(Canada))
Keywords:
Cultural psychiatry,Social determinants of mental health,Poetics of illness experience and healing
This presentation will consider the future of cultural psychiatry in the light of current crises in the arenas of mental health, global politics and planetary ecology. Cultural psychiatry has been marginalized at time when cultural issues are more salient than ever. The attacks on culture come from multiple directions: (i) the persistent neuroreductionism in psychiatry that assumes the universality of human biology and treats culture mainly as an issue for service delivery; (ii) public health approaches that emphasize social structural determinants of health to the exclusion of cultural meaning, values and practice; and (iii) the politics of populism and nativism that views attempts to recognize diversity and respond to inequities as a challenge to the dominance of one group. Each of these challenges points to the need to rethink our views of culture to allow more fruitful engagement with current systems biology, global health and the politics of identity and community. Cultural psychiatry has crucial perspectives to offer on each of these fronts. These include a view of human biology in terms of “poetic naturalism” in which meaning and language play central roles; an understanding of the ways that social determinants of health are created and maintained by cultural values and practices; and an insistence on respect for human diversity as a social, political, and human rights priority.