Doctoral Dissertation Research: Trauma and Insecurity: Understanding Sources of Stress, Resilience, and Mental Health

在克雷格·哈德利博士的指导下，研究人员布朗温·妮可·凯泽将探索压力是如何在极度胁迫的情况下表现和协商的。越来越多的人类学家和其他人提出理论，认为日常压力源（贫困、社会关系和其他文化义务）对心理健康的影响比以前认为的更重要。这种观点与其他学科的理论形成对比，这些学科认为创伤和灾难是造成痛苦的主要力量。该项目将在海地检验这些截然不同的理论。海地人民长期以来因贫困而日常生活困难，但也因最近的地震而遭受创伤。研究人员将采用民族志和生物文化的混合方法，通过对痛苦、应对和恢复力的民族志探索，研究压力源、心理健康结果和生理压力之间的联系。这项研究为人类学和社会科学中关于压力和应对、心理健康和恢复力的辩论做出了更广泛的贡献。通过严格测试社会文化和生理现象之间的联系，了解痛苦和痛苦的显著表现，该项目具有很大的潜力，可以广泛地为全球精神卫生工作提供信息。因此，该项目为人类学内部以及一般学术和公众兴趣的辩论提供了特别及时的贡献。该项目将有助于培训一名女博士生，并通过向保健提供者和决策者传播调查结果，将有助于为保健提供提供信息，特别是在历史上处于不利地位的群体中。

The researcher, Bronwyn Nicole Kaiser, under the supervision of Dr. Craig Hadley will explore how stress is manifested and negotiated under situations of extraordinary duress. A growing group of anthropologists and others have theorized that everyday stressors (poverty, social relationships, and other cultural obligations) have more important impacts on mental health than previously thought. This perspective contrasts with theorizing among other disciplines, which regard trauma and disasters as central forces driving distress. This project will test these contrasting theories in Haiti, where people have long suffered from many daily hardships because of poverty, but have also experienced trauma because of the recent earthquake. Using a mixed method ethnographic and biocultural approach, the researcher will investigate the links between stressors, mental health outcomes, and physiological stress through an ethnographic exploration of distress, coping, and resilience. The study contributes to the debates in anthropology and the social sciences more broadly about stress and coping, mental health and resilience. The project has strong potential to inform work in global mental health broadly by rigorously testing links between sociocultural and physiological phenomena to understand the salient manifestations of suffering and distress. The project thus provides a particularly timely contribution to debates both within anthropology and of general scholarly and public interest.The project will contribute to the training of a female doctoral student, and through the dissemination of findings to healthcare providers and policymakers, will help to inform health care provision, particularly among historically disadvantaged groups.