About the project

The pandemic’s negative effects on the mental health of different population groups are currently receiving increasing attention among psychiatric researchers and clinicians, policy makers and the broader public. In most of these discussions, researchers assume the universality of such mental health consequences around the world – after all, the pandemic-related circumstances and social measures appear to be strikingly similar in most socio-cultural contexts, and in the current climate of global mental health, the same research instruments, diagnoses and questionnaires are often used across the globe.

However, in the context of the history of transcultural psychiatry, which has shed light on the complex relationship between culture, society and mental illness, such assumptions about the global universality of psychological problems and emotional worlds can be problematic and should be questioned.iii The universalization of psychiatric concepts and instruments without taking into account complex socio-cultural contexts can lead to the marginalization of both patients and experts from developing countries, may reinforce Eurocentric tendencies and power structures in mental health, and often results in ineffective policies. This project offers an alternative perspective - a nuanced historical and anthropological analysis of the intricate web of interrelationships between socio-cultural environment and mental health, which will enhance the cultural sensitivity and socio-political awareness of the current global mental health thinking.

Research focus

The project aims to explore the emerging Covid-19 mental health literature (psychiatric, psychological and anthropological) and patients' narratives in different cultural contexts in order to look beyond the discourses of universality, and to see how different societies have experienced the pandemic/lockdown psychologically, what is highlighted and diagnosed (or self-diagnosed) as the core problem in different socio-cultural settings, and how mental health strategies for dealing with Covid-related psychological difficulties could be culturally and socially tailored. Our exploration of the core socio-cultural differences in psychological responses or discourses will point to some crucial aspects of the relationship between culture and concepts of mental illness.