Psychological Anthropology As An Interdisciplinary Subfield Of Mental Health

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Psychological anthropology is an interdisciplinary subfield of anthropology that studies the interactions between culture and mental process. This subfield tends to focus on the ways in which humans ' development within human perception, motivation and mental health. However we will focus on the subfield of mental health and how it plays a role in issues within anthropology and the public. Psychological anthropology is viewed by the public as the study of all mental issues and not the things that relate to it. This perception has brought many people to think that many people with mental illness are insane in the mind. This is only because many people are uneducated in what having and dealing with a mental illness is.

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One way to fix these kinds of stereotypes is to inform the public of what having a mental illness is and the different kinds of mental illness there are. The general definition of mental illness is having a disorder that affects your behavior, mood and thinking. Examples of mental illness are depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and addictive behavior. These examples are well known mental illness but people have no idea the time anthropologist put in to study these things or even why they study these things. By studying current day connections between the pass on mental health can help better our understanding of the future. Knowing the sources of why our brain develops such characteristics will explain why people have curtain symptoms verse others. It also helps us understand more about the development of the disorder and how to maintain or treat …show more content…

They must face the stereotypes the media and public have placed upon them. The media has been known for showing a very narrow side to schizophrenia, the characters in Lord of the Rings, Gollum has what people call symptoms of schizophrenia. And popular TV shows show were a person may commit a crime without knowing because their other personality did the act and they were unaware. Many people take these perspectives and think that all people who have schizophrenia are crazy people who need to be put away in a nuthouse. When there are many different kinds of schizophrenia that people are unaware of. Schizophrenia has been divided into five subfields; catatonic, disorganized, paranoid, residual, and undifferentiated. Many patients are hard to place in these subfields because they have more then one or they change between these subfields frequently. However theses stereotype may be correct for a few of the people who are diagnosed but not all. There are many people who function in the real world without losing sight as to what is going on around them. The also don’t hear voices and have thoughts of doing dangers

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