ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF DEPRESSION

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Anthropology and Psychopathology: Depression, Affective and mood Disorders

Anthropology and Psychopathology: Depression Affective and Mood Disorders

Introduction

In Western societies there has been a general decline of the classical oedipal neuroses, such as phobias and hysteria, and an alarming increase in depression, drug dependence, psychosomatic disorders and narcissistic personality, lifestyle associated with individualistic, typical the capitalist world (Moreira, 2001, Moreira & Sloan, 2002). Many of the symptoms listed as existential, psychological, medical or just probably have cultural origins, as is shown in cross-cultural studies in psychopathology (Aboud, 1998; Draguns, 1995, Kleinman & Good, 1985, Marseille, 1993 and 1998, Marseille & Yamada, 2000; Matsumoto, 1997, Moreira & Boris, 2006, Moreira & Coelho, 2003; Morris, 1998; Sam & Moreira, 2002, Sartorius, 1983; Schumaker, 1996; Schumaker & Ward, 2001; Tatossian, 1997 and 2006 .)

Although depression has been studied since the time of the Greek philosophers (who called melancholy) it has become mental illness representative of postmodernism, we could even say that fashion is disease in the Western world, reaching to reach epidemic levels (Berlinck, 2000; Ehrenberger, 2000, Schumaker, 2001).Depression is understood and contradictory ways: as a narcissistic disturbance typical of Western society as a brain disorder of serotonin production or simply from an ontological perspective. Its meaning varies between cultural and biological poles, always in a dichotomous perspective psychopathological approach, based on a dualistic thinking, which confirms the typical individualistic ideology of the Western world, in which mental illness is considered only in its individual origin (Kleinman, 1995; Moreira, 2005a; Moreira & Sloan, 2002).

Understanding depression in a mundane, at the intersection between man and the world, the etiologic anthropological, sociological and political, not just individual-biological and / or psychological - as I argue in a frame of Psychopathology Review. On this basis, I will reflect on the following questions: What is the current meaning of depression as psychopathological manifestations constituted one another with the culture from a worldly perspective; What ideology supports the experience of depression in Brazilian culture , Chilean and American?, and finally, what is the ideological and cultural meaning of depression in the contemporary world?

The Worldly Full Review of Psychopathology

It is known that traditional psychopathology, developed in the context of Western thought, is inserted into a Cartesian dualist tradition, where the man has an inside and outside, a social dimension and a single external world and inner world. Previous studies in the field of clinical psychology and psychiatric phenomenological psychopathology show how traditionally chosen as a study object inside it, the individual, the inner (Moreira, 2001, 2005a, 2005b; Tatossian, 1997, 2006; Tellenbach, 1967).  The concept of multiple contours mundane Merleau-Ponty (1960, 1964) finally breaks with the dichotomy of man / woman-world, subject and object, individual-society, real-imaginary. It involves using a cultural lens for understanding psychopathological experience in its historical complexity, including for example, the identification of situations of injustice and social inequalities as part of its etiology. Take for example - to understand this premise - the analysis of Kleinman, Das and Lock (1997) and Lira (2000) when referring to the error of diagnosing as post traumatic stress political ...