Extraordinary conditions : culture and experience in mental illness /

Jenkins (psychological/medical anthropology, Univ. of California, San Diego) offers an anthropological presentation of cultural variation in experiencing and coping with human "extraordinary conditions," in which he includes both mental illness and sociopolitical trauma. Based on long-term ethnographic studies, the book emphasizes the need to consider cultural, social, and political factors in seeking to understand and interpret what extraordinary conditions mean to people of various cultures and how those people experience and cope with the particular conditions in which they find themselves. Beyond medical professionals' clinical diagnoses and descriptions of symptoms, extraordinary conditions such as schizophrenia, depression, and psychosis--as well as political violence and trauma--are culturally experienced, conditioned, interpreted, and shaped. The experience of mental illness and trauma, from onset to recovery, is more a struggle than simply a demonstration of symptoms, and cultural variation in the struggle, across diverse populations, is common. This extraordinary book will be relevant to all who are interested in medical anthropology, psychiatry, and health studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. --Andrew Y. Lee, George Mason University