Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Impact of Rapid Socioeconomic Change on Mental Health and Associated Healing Practices

社会经济变化速度的加快与社会痛苦和相关精神疾病的普遍增加有关，但卫生系统往往难以发展应对精神障碍的能力和知识。专注于精神疾病的生物学层面，科学家主要寻找生物医学解决方案。然而，最近的研究对生物医学治疗模式的有效性提出了质疑，指出在历史上很少获得生物医学干预的人群中，精神疾病的预后出乎意料地好。这些积极的预测归因于文化和家庭习俗。这个项目训练研究生如何进行严格的以经验为基础的科学实地调查，旨在了解快速的社会经济变化对边缘人群的心理健康和治疗的影响。康奈尔大学研究生Ting Hui Lau在Magnus Fiskesjo博士的指导下，将研究中国西南农村的土著精神疾病类别和传统治疗方法，那里的少数民族和宗教少数群体正在经历快速的社会经济变化。她的研究包括以下两个主要部分：首先，她将记录和分析土著疾病类别、宗教宇宙论和相关的治疗实践。其次，她将从民族志上评估这些做法在快速发展背景下的转变。她的项目通过(1)评估快速的社会和经济变化对边缘化少数民族社区及其心理健康的影响，促进对精神疾病的社会科学理解；(2)深化学者和政策制定者对边缘化社区如何在面对社会困境时从本土精神实践中获得复原力的理解；(3)通过更多地考虑精神疾病的社会和文化维度，促进对精神疾病本质和起源的科学认识。方法包括参与者观察、开放式访谈和生活史收集，所有这些都是这类研究广泛接受的标准人种学方法。

Increasing rates of socioeconomic change are associated with widespread increases in social distress and related mental illnesses, yet health systems often struggle to develop the capacity and knowledge for responding to mental disorders. Focusing on the biological dimensions of mental illness, scientists predominantly search for biomedical solutions. Recent studies, however, have called into question the effectiveness of biomedical treatment models, noting unexpectedly good mental-illness prognoses among populations with scant historic access to biomedical interventions. These positive prognoses have been attributed to cultural and familial practices. This project, which trains a graduate student in how to conduct rigorous empirically-grounded scientific fieldwork, seeks to understand the impact of rapid socioeconomic change on the mental health and treatment of marginal populations. Cornell University graduate student Ting Hui Lau under the supervision of Dr. Magnus Fiskesjo, will examine indigenous mental illness categories and traditional healing practices in rural Southwest China where ethnic and religious minority populations are undergoing rapid socioeconomic change. Her study includes the following two major components: First, she will document and analyze indigenous illness categories, religious cosmologies, and associated healing practices. Second, she will ethnographically evaluate the transformation of these practices in the context of rapid development. Her project advances social scientific understanding of mental illness by (1) evaluating the impact of rapid social and economic change on marginalized minority communities and their mental health; (2) deepening scholar's and policymaker's understandings of how marginalized communities derive resilience from indigenous spiritual practices in the face of social distress; and (3) contributing to scientific knowledge of the nature and origins of mental illness by giving more consideration to the social and cultural dimensions of mental illness. Methods include participant observation, open-ended interviews, and the collection of life histories, all of which are widely accepted and standard ethnographic approaches for this type of study.