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

凯斯西储大学博士候选人莎拉E。鲁宾在艾琳·安德森-费伊博士的指导下，将对疾病类别的跨文化相关性进行研究。在过去的三十年里，患病率研究、诊断仪器和治疗方案已经出口到地球仪各地，以诊断和治疗疾病，但却没有完全理解这些诊断概念在它们被创造和编纂的西方地区之外的背景下是否保留了意义和解释力。 鲁宾研究的具体重点将是产后抑郁症，这是一个诊断类别，在每一种文化或经济背景下可能会或可能不会突出。 她将调查南非开普敦附近一个贫穷的城市社区的产后抑郁症诊断。她将通过调查母亲在产后时期的社会角色和情感经历的交叉点，解决诊断类别和当地母亲经验的相关性。她将探讨日常逆境影响母性角色和实践的过程，产后情绪困扰的看法，以及如何在临床背景下使用和理解产后抑郁症的概念。 本研究采用联合收割机纵向访谈、直接观察、参与观察、标准化问卷调查和文化共识模型相结合的研究方法，有助于我们理解母性和母性文化的建构;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亲和长期逆境等社会角色的影响;社会角色、情感和社会背景是如何反复构建的理论;以及我们对将西方诊断概念出口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.