Mental Disorder: Anthropological Insights

Published in 2017 

This brief book introduces the ways in which contemporary anthropology engages with the "psych" disciplines: psychology, psychiatry, and medicine. Khan also widens the conversation by including the perspectives of epidemiologists, addiction and legal experts, journalists, filmmakers, activists, patients, and sufferers. New approaches to mental illness are situated in the context of historical, political, psychoanalytic, and postcolonial frameworks, allowing readers to understand how health, illness, normality, and abnormality are constructed and produced. Using case studies from a variety of regions, Khan explores what anthropologically informed psychology, psychiatry, and medicine can tell us about mental illness across cultures.

International: critically crosses global North and South divides

Editorial Reviews 

“ There really is no other place that a student can go, and in a very short period of time read herself into the questions and debates that have flourished in this field and continue to make it salient. Khan should be commended for skilfully weaving her way through a minefield of debates, controversies, and the thorny and controverted discourses that clash between the ‘psych’ professions.”— Arthur Kleinman, Professor of Medical Anthropology, Harvard Medical School, Harvard University.

“The book is very good and provides a useful overview of many key issues as well as helpful discussion topics. I will use it as supplementary reading for our graduate seminar.”—Laurence J. Kirmayer, James McGill Professor & Director, Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University.

Academic reviews: Anthropology and Medicine 2017 24(3); Medical Anthropology Quarterly 2017.