Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Afro-Caribbean Women and Schizophrenia in England

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Graduate student Johanne Eliacin, supervised by Dr. Tanya M. Luhrmann, will conduct an ethnographic investigation of the lived experiences of UK African-Caribbeans, with and without schizophrenia, to illuminate the socio-cultural mechanisms and processes that contribute to their high prevalence of the illness. Over the past twenty years, epidemiological studies have reported consistently that individuals of Caribbean origin in England have the highest rate of schizophrenia ever recorded anywhere. Research data suggest that the increased rates of schizophrenia in this population are not due to genetic vulnerability or biological factors but to environmental stress and other social risk factors that are not yet fully understood. Using ethnographic research methods, the researcher will explore how UK African-Caribbeans' subjective experiences of their social worlds shape their sense of self and the ways they experience and cope with stress. Building on existing epidemiological findings, she will conduct a micro-analysis of identified risk factors to better understand how they play out in individuals' daily life and generate specific hypotheses about how the social environment may lead to greater vulnerability to schizophrenia. She will also focus on African-Caribbean women, a population that is largely neglected in schizophrenia research in the UK. This ethnographic work will complement the epidemiological studies by providing the contextual and interpretative frameworks to analyze the experiences of African-Caribbeans in England and the various risks factors associated with schizophrenia in this population. It will contribute to an understanding of the role of socio-environmental factors in the development of schizophrenia and anthropological theories on the long-term impacts of immigration over the life course. It will help to bring to fore the experiences of African-Caribbean women in schizophrenia and health disparity research. It will also contribute significantly to the education of a female social scientist from an under-represented minority group.