Culture and Panic Disorder [Hardcover]

Psychiatric classifications created in one culture may not be as universal as we assume, and it is difficult to determine the validity of a classification even in the culture in which it was created.Culture and Panic Disorderexplores how the psychiatric classification of panic disorder first emerged, how medical theories of this disorder have shifted through time, and whether or not panic disorder can actually be diagnosed across cultures.In this breakthrough volume a distinguished group of medical and psychological anthropologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and historians of science provide ethnographic insights as they investigate the presentation and generation of panic disorder in various cultures. The first available work with a focus on the historical and cross-cultural aspects of panic disorders, this book presents a fresh opportunity to reevaluate Western theories of panic that were formerly taken for granted. With rich cross-cultural cases, this timely book documents the centrality and critical need for diagnosticians, clinicians, and researchers to take seriously the cultural nexus of shared meanings, idioms, embodiments, and practices in seeking to understand and help patients presenting with 'panic.' This is scholarship of the highest order, by experienced contributors, and is widely and definitely needed. For students interested in the history of emotions, trauma, medicine, and genocide, this book offers valuable orientation. Beyond outlining the current theories about panic and anxiety, its sociocultural and anthropological moorings easily lend themselves to application in historical contexts. Readers will have little difficulty finding thematic and analytic ports in which they can dock their historical narratives. Devon E. Hinton is a psychiatrist and medical anthropologist, and is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Byron J. Good is Professor of Medical Anthropology in the DepalC7