Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Cross-Cultural Research on Psychiatry, Gender and Childhood

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Columbia University doctoral student, Sahar Sadjadi, MD, with the guidance of Dr. Carole Vance, will undertake comparative research on psychiatric diagnoses and the influence of western diagnostic tools across cultures. The focus of the research will be current clinical practices around gender disorders in children, in both diagnosis and treatment, since 1980, and the use and influence of the diagnostic categories recently revised by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Task Force of the American Psychiatric Association. The research will be carried out in two clinics, one in Boston, MA, and the other in Tehran, Iran. The researcher will collect data through participant observation in the Task Force and clinics; through interviews with clinicians, patients, and parents; and through study of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual texts and technical instruments.The research is significant because it will be the first cross-cultural anthropological study of these particular disorders in children. More generally, it will elucidate the increasing world-wide influence of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. The research also will develop new methodologies for moving among the multiple, connected, and unequal scales of global expert knowledge, and local clinical practice. Supporting this research also supports the education of a graduate student.