Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Role of Knowledge in the Experience and Understanding of a Psychological Disorder

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University of Chicago doctoral student Brenden Raymond-Yakoubian, with guidance from Dr. Jean Comaroff, will investigate how knowledge concerns, evinced in discourse, figure into the experience and understanding of psychiatric disorders. The discourse of knowledge concerns includes discussions of what constitutes accurate information, what can and cannot be known, what is considered to be evidence, and how evidence may be deployed in psychiatric contexts. The focus of the research will be obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in the American treatment context. OCD is estimated to have a prevalence rate of 1 to 3 percent in the US, which gives this research the potential for broad social value. The researcher will undertake ethnographic fieldwork at two clinical programs in the United States which treat OCD. The researcher will also undertake fieldwork with OCD support groups, with OCD-related advocates, and at conferences related to OCD and its treatment. Additional research will be conducted through analysis of OCD medical, research and self-help literature as well as popular media. Data collection will focus on determining what the discourses in this context are, how they are interrelated, what role knowledge plays in these discourses, and how knowledge concerns circulate.Previous social science study of OCD has focused on the disorder as a form of personal ritual or cultural modeling. This new project will contribute to better understanding of OCD, and potentially other psychiatric disorders, by investigating how knowledge concerns affect the cultural experiences and understandings of OCD. This will contribute to social science theory of the relation between mental illness and culture, as well as to improving care for those with OCD. Additionally, this research will support the education of a social scientist.