Doctoral Dissertation Research: An Ethnographic Investigation of Postnatal Depression in Sociocultural Context

凯斯西储大学博士候选人Sarah E. Rubin将在Eileen Anderson-Fye博士的指导下进行疾病类别跨文化相关性的研究。在过去的三十年里，患病率研究、诊断工具和治疗方案已经被输出到全球各地，用于诊断和治疗疾病，但却没有完全理解这些诊断概念在西方地区以外的环境中是否仍然具有意义和解释力。鲁宾的研究重点将是产后抑郁症，这一诊断类别在每一种文化或经济背景下都可能突出，也可能不突出。她将在南非开普敦附近一个贫穷的城市社区调查产后抑郁症的诊断。她将通过调查母亲的社会角色和产后情感经历的交集来解决诊断类别和母亲当地经验的相关性。她将探讨日常逆境影响母亲角色和实践的过程，产后情绪困扰的感知，以及产后抑郁症的概念如何在临床环境中使用和理解。本研究将结合纵向访谈、直接观察、参与观察、标准化问卷调查和文化共识模型的管理。这项研究很重要，因为它将有助于我们理解母性和育儿的文化建构；我们对全球妇女精神疾病负担的理解，特别是因为它受到母性和慢性逆境等社会角色的影响；关于社会角色、情感和社会环境如何迭代构建的理论；以及我们对将西方诊断概念输出到其他文化和社区的过程和后果的理解。这项研究还将支持社会科学家的教育和培训。

Case Western Reserve University doctoral candidate Sarah E. Rubin, with the guidance of Dr. Eileen Anderson-Fye, will undertake research on the cross-cultural relevance of disease categories. Over the past three decades, prevalence studies, diagnostic instruments, and treatment programs have been exported across the globe to diagnose and treat conditions without a complete understanding of whether these diagnostic concepts retain meaning and explanatory power in contexts outside of the Western locales where they were created and codified. The specific focus of Rubin's research will be postnatal depression, a diagnostic category that may or may not be salient in every cultural or economic context. She will investigate postnatal depression diagnoses in a poor, urban community near Cape Town, South Africa. She will address both the relevance of the diagnostic category and the local experience of motherhood by investigating the intersection of mothers' social roles and emotional experience in the postnatal period. She will explore the processes by which daily adversity influences the motherhood role and practice, perceptions of emotional distress in the postnatal period, and how the concept postnatal depression is used and understood in the clinical context. The study will combine longitudinal interviewing, direct observation, and participant observation with the administration of standardized questionnaires and cultural consensus modeling.This research is important because it will contribute to our understanding of the cultural construction of motherhood and mothering; to our understanding of the global burden of mental illness on women, specifically as it is affected by social roles such as motherhood and chronic adversity; to theories of how social role, emotion, and social context are iteratively constructed; and to our understanding of the processes and consequences of exporting Western diagnostic concepts to other cultures and communities. This research will also support the education and training of a social scientist.