Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Effects of Immigration on Local Understandings of Mental Health

博士生惠特尼·L·邓肯在她的导师詹尼斯·H·詹金斯博士的指导下，将对全球化的一个特定方面进行研究：欧美精神病学和心理学实践以及意识形态在世界各地的新地点的传播，这些地方对情绪和疾病的理解正在以多种方式受到影响。这项研究将调查全球化的心理健康意识形态是否以及如何改变当地的医疗系统，关于什么是情绪稳定的概念，什么治疗方式适合那些不稳定的人，以及情绪困扰的主观体验。这项研究将在墨西哥瓦哈卡州的当地背景下进行。在过去的20年里，瓦哈卡被诊断为精神疾病的人数急剧增加，精神和心理服务的可获得性激增，对精神卫生保健的需求也达到了前所未有的水平。这项多地点的人种学研究调查了精神卫生保健的增长是如何以及为什么发生的，以及它对瓦哈卡州人的情绪困扰的概念和经历产生了什么影响。将在首都瓦哈卡德华雷斯以及移民无处不在的土著Mixteca地区进行人种学研究。研究人员将进行长期的参与者观察、结构化、半结构化和生活史访谈，并对随意互动进行社会语言学分析。这项研究很重要，因为它将提供对特定地点情感、疾病和康复的文化背景的人种学描述，并将促进对社会生活和主体性的这些方面在竞争的局部和全球话语下如何变化的理论理解。在瓦哈卡这一文化变革和社会变迁的时刻进行这项拟议的研究，将阐明全球化的精神健康做法和话语在地方一级所产生的影响。这项研究的结果还将帮助在美国与墨西哥移民社区合作的从业者。为这项研究提供资金支持研究生的教育。

Doctoral student, Whitney L. Duncan, with the guidance of her advisor Dr. Janis H. Jenkins, will undertake research on a specific aspect of globalization: the spread of Euroamerican psychiatric and psychological practices and ideologies to new sites around the world, where local understandings of emotion and illness are being impacted in multiple ways. The study will investigate if and how globalizing mental health ideologies are changing local medical systems, conceptions about what it means to be emotionally stable, what therapeutic modalities are appropriate for those who are not stable, and the subjective experience of emotional distress. The research will be carried out in the local context of Oaxaca, Mexico. Over the past two decades, Oaxaca has seen dramatic increases in diagnosed mental illnesses, a spike in the availability of psychiatric and psychological services, and an unprecedented demand for mental healthcare. This multi-sited ethnographic study investigates how and why the growth in mental healthcare has occurred and what impact it is having on Oaxacans' conceptions and experiences of emotional distress. Ethnographic research will be carried out in the capital city of Oaxaca de Juárez as well as in the indigenous Mixteca region, where emigration is ubiquitous. The investigator will conduct long-term participant observation, structured, semi-structured, and life history interviews, and sociolinguistic analysis of casual interactions. The research is important because it will provide an ethnographic account of the cultural context of emotion, illness, and healing in a particular locale, and will advance theoretical understanding of how those aspects of social life and subjectivity change under competing local and global discourses. Conducting the proposed study in Oaxaca at this moment of cultural change and social flux will illuminate the effects globalizing mental health practices and discourses are having at the local level. The results of the research also will help practitioners working with Mexican migrant communities in the United States. Funding the research supports the education of a graduate student.