Culture and Social Psychiatry

by Marvin Opler (Editor)

Overview

This brilliant and engrossing work of social synthesis, replete with profound insights, opens up new vistas on the relationship between culture and mental health. The author uses his own extensive findings and his abundant knowledge of the cross-cultural studies in psychiatry, anthropology, and sociology to demonstrate that throughout history mental disorders have been closely linked with the prevailing culture and have thus changed in kind and extent.

Opler's classic Culture, Psychiatry, and Human Values has here been revised and expanded to nearly twice the size of the original work. The new materials present in greater depth the author's views on the connection between culture and mental health and broaden the perspectives of theory and research on cultural change and development, the migration of acculturating populations, and the resulting shifts in diagnostic and therapeutic problems brought about by the stresses of the modern world.

By enriching a survey of cultural evolution with fertile cross-cultural comparisons and a discussion of the interaction between culture and personality, Opler adds to our knowledge of the etiology and treatment of mental illnesses in primitive societies as well as among more advanced ethnic groups and subcultures in today's metropolis. Of particular significance at a time when social and community psychiatry has assumed a major role all over the world, this pioneering work is must reading not only for students of culture and personality, psychiatrists, social scientists, and workers in community health programs, but also for the educated reader concerned about these critical problems of our day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780202309545
Publisher:	Transaction Publishers
Publication date:	01/15/2007
Pages:	458
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Marvin K. Opler (1914-1981) was professor of social psychiatry and professor of sociology and anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He was for many years editor of The International Journal of Social Psychiatry, and was associate editor of the American Anthropologist. He was also editor and co-author of Culture and Mental Health, and co-author of Mental Health in the Metropolis: The Midtown Manhattan Study and Impounded People.

Table of Contents

I: Social and Cultural Backgrounds of Mental Illness; Introduction; 1: Methodological Considerations in Social Psychiatry; 2: The Dimensions of Culture and Human Values; II: The Psychology of Cultures and Peoples; 3: The Psychology of Culture; 4: Culture and Psychiatry; III: Research Designs; 5: Theory and Direction in Research Designs; 6: Studies in Culture and Personality

Editorial Reviews

In his book, Culture and Social Psychiatry, Dr. Opler has provided a needed integration of the materials in the fields of philosophy, anthropology and psychiatry. . . . Dr. Opler’s work should be a must . . . because of the light it sheds on the role of culturally derived values in the development of personality. . . . Highly recommended.” —Ronald A. Steffenhagen, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

From the Publisher