Culture and Depression

Some of the most innovative and provocative work on the emotions and illness is occurring in cross-cultural research on depression. Culture and Depression presents the work of anthropologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists who examine the controversies, agreements, and conceptual and methodological problems that arise in the course of such research. A book of enormous depth and breadth of discussion, Culture and Depression enriches the cross-cultural study of emotions and mental illness and leads it in new directions. It commences with a historical study followed by a series of anthropological accounts that examine the problems that arise when depression is assessed in other cultures. This is a work of impressive scholarship which demonstrates that anthropological approaches to affect and illness raise central questions for psychiatry and psychology, and that cross-cultural studies of depression raise equally provocative questions for anthropology.

Arthur Kleinman is a prominent American psychiatrist and is the Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of medical anthropology and cross-cultural psychiatry at Harvard University. Byron J. Good is Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard University.

Preface
Introduction: Culture and Depression
Arthur Kleinman and Byron Good

Part I. MEANINGS, RELATIONSHIPS, SOCIAL AFFECTS:
HISTORICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVES  ON DEPRESSION
Introduction to Part I

1. Acedia the Sin and Its Relationship to Sorrow and Melancholia
Stanley W. Jackson

2. Depression and the Translation of Emotional Worlds
Catherine Lutz

3. The Cultural Analysis of Depressive Affect: An Example from New Guinea
Edward L. Schieffelin

4. Depression, Buddhism, and the Work of Culture in Sri Lanka
Gananath Obeyesekere

5. The Interpretive Basis of Depression
Charles F. Keyes

Part II DEPRESSIVE COGNITION, COMMUNICATION, AND BEHAVIOR
Introduction to Part

6.Menstrual Pollution, Soul Loss, and the Comparative Study of Emotions
Richard A. Shweder

7. Dimensions of Dysphoria: The View from Linguistic Anthropology
William 0. Beeman

8. The Theoretical Implications of Converging Research on Depression and the
Culture-Bound Syndromes
John E. Carr and Peter P. Vitaliano

Part III EPIDEMIOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT OF DEPRESSNE DISORDERS CROSS-CULTURALLY
Introduction to Part III

9. A Study of Depression among Traditional Africans, Urban North Americans,
and Southeast Asian Refugees
Morton Beiser

10. Cross-Cultural Studies of Depressive Disorders: An Overview
Anthony J. Marsella, Norman Sartorius,
Assen Jablensky, and Fred R. Fenton

Part IV INTEGRATIONS: ANTHROPOLOGICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRIC ANTHROPOLOGY
OF DEPRESSWE DISORDERS
Introduction to Part IV

11. The Depressive Experience in American Indian Communities:
A Challenge for Psychiatric Theory and Diagnosis
Spero M. Manson, James H. Shore,
and Joseph D. Bloom

12. The Interpretation of Iranian Depressive Illness and Dysphoric Affect
Byron J. Good, Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good,
and Robert Moradi

13. Somatization: The Interconnections in Chinese Society among Culture,
Depressive Experiences, and the Meanings of Pain
Arthur Kleinman and Joan Kleinman

Epilogue: Culture and Depression
Byron Good and Arthur Kleinman

Contributors
Indexes
Author Index
Subject Index