Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Afro-Caribbean Women and Schizophrenia in England

在Tanya M. Luhrmann博士的指导下，研究生Johanne Eliacin将对英国非裔加勒比人的生活经历进行人种学调查，包括患有和不患有精神分裂症的人，以阐明导致他们高患病率的社会文化机制和过程。在过去的二十年里，流行病学研究一致地报告说，英格兰加勒比血统的人患精神分裂症的比率是有记录以来最高的。研究数据表明，这一人群中精神分裂症发病率的增加不是由于遗传易感性或生物学因素，而是由于环境压力和其他尚未完全了解的社会风险因素。利用民族志研究方法，研究人员将探索英国非洲裔加勒比人对其社会世界的主观体验如何塑造他们的自我意识以及他们体验和应对压力的方式。在现有流行病学发现的基础上，她将对已确定的风险因素进行微观分析，以更好地了解它们如何在个人日常生活中发挥作用，并就社会环境如何导致更容易患精神分裂症产生具体假设。她还将关注非裔加勒比妇女，这一群体在英国的精神分裂症研究中基本上被忽视了。这项民族志工作将通过提供背景和解释性框架来分析英格兰非洲-加勒比人的经历以及与该人群中精神分裂症相关的各种风险因素，从而补充流行病学研究。它将有助于理解社会环境因素在精神分裂症发展中的作用，以及关于移民在生命过程中长期影响的人类学理论。它将有助于突出非洲裔加勒比妇女在精神分裂症和健康差距研究方面的经验。它还将对来自代表性不足的少数群体的女性社会科学家的教育作出重大贡献。

Graduate student Johanne Eliacin, supervised by Dr. Tanya M. Luhrmann, will conduct an ethnographic investigation of the lived experiences of UK African-Caribbeans, with and without schizophrenia, to illuminate the socio-cultural mechanisms and processes that contribute to their high prevalence of the illness. Over the past twenty years, epidemiological studies have reported consistently that individuals of Caribbean origin in England have the highest rate of schizophrenia ever recorded anywhere. Research data suggest that the increased rates of schizophrenia in this population are not due to genetic vulnerability or biological factors but to environmental stress and other social risk factors that are not yet fully understood. Using ethnographic research methods, the researcher will explore how UK African-Caribbeans' subjective experiences of their social worlds shape their sense of self and the ways they experience and cope with stress. Building on existing epidemiological findings, she will conduct a micro-analysis of identified risk factors to better understand how they play out in individuals' daily life and generate specific hypotheses about how the social environment may lead to greater vulnerability to schizophrenia. She will also focus on African-Caribbean women, a population that is largely neglected in schizophrenia research in the UK. This ethnographic work will complement the epidemiological studies by providing the contextual and interpretative frameworks to analyze the experiences of African-Caribbeans in England and the various risks factors associated with schizophrenia in this population. It will contribute to an understanding of the role of socio-environmental factors in the development of schizophrenia and anthropological theories on the long-term impacts of immigration over the life course. It will help to bring to fore the experiences of African-Caribbean women in schizophrenia and health disparity research. It will also contribute significantly to the education of a female social scientist from an under-represented minority group.