#498 Kristen Syme: Mental Disorders and Suicide From an Anthropological Perspective
RECORDED ON APRIL 12th 2021.
Dr. Kristen Syme is research associate at the Faculty of Behavioral and Movement Sciences at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She received her BA in anthropology from the University of Delaware where she developed an interest in using evolutionary theory to investigate mental health and behavioral phenomena that are diagnosed and treated as diseases and deviations according to the Western medical paradigm. She conducted her MA research on suicidal behavior in 53 cultures and received her MA in 2014. Her research interests broadly concern the evolved interpersonal functions of psychological and behavioral phenomena. Her MA thesis tested two evolutionary models of suicidal behavior against the ethnographic record, and my dissertation research is a continuation of this project. She is presently conducting an exploratory investigation on bargaining strategies and parent-offspring conflict with an immigrant Micronesian population in the Vancouver WA/Portland, OR area.
In this episode, we talk about mental disorders from an anthropological perspective, suicidal behavior, and leadership. We start by mentioning how to think about mental disorders as cultural constructs. We discuss mental illness in modern society. We ask if mental disorders are diseases. We then get into suicide, and discuss it from an evolutionary perspective, including the bargaining and inclusive fitness models of suicide. We also talk about preventing suicide, and the power imbalance in the mental health professional/patient relationship.
Time Links:
Intro
The anthropology of mental disorder
Mental illness in modern society
Are mental disorders diseases?
Suicide from an evolutionary perspective
The bargaining vs. inclusive fitness models of suicide
Preventing suicide
The influence of mental health professionals, over their patients and in their culture
Follow Dr. Syme’s work!
Follow Dr. Syme’s work:
University page: https://bit.ly/2Rlo9W4
ResearchGate profile: https://bit.ly/3d5YokY
Twitter handle: @kristensyme