Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Social Construction of Depression in Chinese Societies

博士论文改进资助：中国社会抑郁症的社会建构

• 批准号: 0548921
• 负责人: Tanya Luhrmann
• 金额: $ 0.84万
• 依托单位: University of Chicago
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-01-15 至 2006-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0548921&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Improvement; Grant; Social

A scholarly consensus is now emerging that the psychiatric disorder major depression represents an issue of growing global and economic importance. Despite a wealth of epidemiological and clinical evidence to support this view, little research has assessed the local social and cultural origins of depression's global emergence. This is particularly true in societies outside the industrialized West in which depression previously served as neither a salient sociocultural nor professional diagnostic category. In the People's Republic of China, prior to the commencement of the "open up and reform" period in 1978, prevalence rates for depression were several hundred times lower than in the United States, while depression as a cultural category had little value among everyday Chinese. Over the course of the past twenty years, however, diagnoses of depression have risen dramatically, as depression continues to garner increasing attention among the mass media, public policy circles, and local everyday discourse. This dissertation research project by a cultural anthropologist will investigate the cultural processes by which depression in China is being transformed from an obscure professional category to a prominent place within Chinese society and psychiatric practice. The project will examine the circulation of depression within four domains: medical education and clinical treatment, the Chinese family, subjective illness narratives, and contemporary health practices, to determine the local cultural logics conducive to the appropriation and dissemination of depression as a disease category within the Chinese context. These four domains will be examined through participant observation; informal and formal interviews with doctors, patients, family members, educators, and government officials; recordings of illness narratives; archival research; and textual analysis. This study will contribute to contemporary debates in anthropological theory concerning category production, embodiment, and the cultural dimensions of psychiatry and medicine. The rich combination of ethnographic data and illness narratives will also be of interest to China scholars, by providing much-needed insight into the local dynamics of social change in contemporary Chinese society and helping to clarify the connection between China's recent large-scale social and economic transformations and their impact on the local lives of individuals and families. The broader impacts of this study include gaining a better understanding of the broad mental health effects of globalization worldwide, and providing a rich corpus of data for administrators and policymakers seeking to develop culturally-sensitive mental health policies.

目前学术界正在达成共识，即精神疾病重度抑郁症是一个日益重要的全球和经济问题。 尽管有大量的流行病学和临床证据支持这一观点，但很少有研究评估抑郁症在全球出现的当地社会和文化根源。在工业化西方以外的社会中尤其如此，在这些社会中，抑郁症以前既不是显着的社会文化也不是专业的诊断类别。 在中华人民共和国，1978年“改革开放”之前，抑郁症的患病率比美国低数百倍，而抑郁症作为一种文化范畴，在普通中国人中几乎没有价值。 。 然而，在过去的二十年里，随着抑郁症继续受到大众媒体、公共政策界和当地日常话语的越来越多的关注，抑郁症的诊断人数急剧上升。 文化人类学家的这篇论文研究项目将调查中国抑郁症从一个不起眼的专业类别转变为中国社会和精神病学实践中的重要地位的文化过程。 该项目将考察抑郁症在四个领域的传播：医学教育和临床治疗、中国家庭、主观疾病叙事和当代健康实践，以确定有利于抑郁症作为一种疾病类别在中国的挪用和传播的当地文化逻辑。中国的背景。 这四个领域将通过参与观察进行审查；对医生、患者、家庭成员、教育工作者和政府官员进行非正式和正式访谈；疾病叙述的录音；档案研究；和文本分析。 这项研究将为当代人类学理论中有关精神病学和医学的范畴产生、体现以及文化维度的争论做出贡献。 民族志数据和疾病叙述的丰富结合也将引起中国学者的兴趣，因为它们提供了对当代中国社会变革的局部动态的急需的洞察，并有助于阐明中国最近大规模的社会和经济之间的联系。变革及其对当地个人和家庭生活的影响。 这项研究的更广泛影响包括更好地了解全球化对全球心理健康的广泛影响，并为寻求制定文化敏感心理健康政策的管理者和政策制定者提供丰富的数据集。