Bridging Psychiatric and Anthropological Approaches: The Case of “Nerves” in the United States

摘要: Psychiatrists and anthropologists have taken distinct analytic approaches when confronted with differences between emic etic models for distress: psychiatrists translated folk into diagnostic categories whereas emphasized culture-specific meanings of illness. The rift psychiatric anthropological research keeps “individual disease” “culture” disconnected thus hinders the study interrelationships mental health culture. In this article we bridge by using cultural to explore experience nerves among 27 older primary care patients from Baltimore, Maryland. We suggest that distress arise in response personal experiences, turn, shape those experiences. Shifting a focus on comparing content concepts, examining how these social realities concepts are coconstructed, may resolve epistemological ontological debates surrounding improve understanding culture health. [“nerves,” models, metaphor, psychiatry, embodiment]