Dr. Beatriz Reyes-Foster (photo courtesy of Dr. Reyes-Foster)
Medical Anthropologist Dr. Beatriz Reyes-Foster returns, this time to discuss her experiences researching a psychiatric hospital in Mexico, looking at how culture shapes the diagnoses, care, and outcomes of mental illness.
How is mental illness cultural? Medical Anthropologists have long demonstrated how a phenomenon categorized as a disorder, like schizophrenia, is understood and experienced very differently from culture to culture. How the illness is viewed in society, what support structures are available, and which ideologies dominate, such as individuality or the importance of family, all play roles in how a person with illness is treated. When these circumstances are situated in a location where the history of colonialism continues to dominate the lives and identities of indigenous patients, what is often narrowly defined as mental health becomes an issue of national economic, race, and identity systems.
Dr. Reyes-Foster documents how staff at a mental hospital in the Yucatan in Mexico struggle to be human in inhumane conditions, which are set from on high at a governmental level, the results of contemporary politics and the long-standing impacts of colonialism.
To download or stream the episode, use the audio player above, or find AOTS through the following sites:
- Subscribe through iTunes on your computer, iPad, or iPhone
- Subscribe through Google Play or Stitcher on your computer or android tablet/phone
For more information on Dr. Reyes-Foster:
Dr. Reyes-Foster’s university bio and cv: https://sciences.ucf.edu/anthropology/person/beatriz-reyes-foster/
Dr. Reyes-Foster’s previous podcast episode with AOTS: Episode 2 Breast Milk Sharing and “Good” Mommies with Dr. Beatriz Reyes-Foster
For more information on materials referenced in this episode:
A blog post series on Trauma and Resilience co-organized by Dr. Reyes-Foster and Rebecca Lester for Anthrodendum: https://anthrodendum.org/author/trauma-and-resilience/
Podcast episode with Dr. Reyes-Foster and Rebecca Lester for Anthropod about mental health in and of anthropology: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/anthropology-and-of-mental-health-1
Anthropology of Mental Health Interest Group website: http://amhig.medanthro.net
Yucatan, Mexico (Image by aiworldexplore from Pixabay)
Frantz Fanon’s “zone of being and non-being” in Black Skin, White Masks
Orin Starn’s book on Ishi and his legacy: Ishi’s Brain: In Search of Americas Last “Wild” Indian
Byron Good’s summation of the Anthropology of Biomedicine: Medicine, Rationality and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective
