Byron Good

Last updated
Byron J. Good
Born
Byron Joseph Good

1944
EducationGoshen College (B.A.)
Harvard Divinity School (B.D.)
University of Chicago (Ph.D.)
OccupationMedical anthropologist
EmployerHarvard University

Byron Joseph Good (born 1944) is an American medical anthropologist primarily studying mental illness. He is currently on the faculty of Harvard University, where he is Professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Cultural Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology.

Contents

Good has contributed primarily to the field of psychological anthropology, and his writings have explored the cultural meaning of mental illnesses, patient narratives of illness, the epistemic perspective of biomedicine and its treatment of non-Western medical knowledge, and the comparative development of mental health systems. [1] [2] He has conducted his research in Iran, Indonesia, and the United States.

Education

Good holds a B.A. degree from Goshen College and a B.D. in Comparative Study of Religions from Harvard Divinity School. [3] In 1977, he received his Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Chicago with a thesis entitled "The Heart of What's the Matter: The Structure of Medical Discourse in a Provincial Iranian Town." [4]

Career

At Harvard, Good is co-director of the International Mental Health Training Program, a program funded by the Fogarty International Center. He also co-directed the National Institute of Mental Health Training Program in Culture and Mental Health, at Harvard University, a postdoctoral program through which psychiatrists and medical anthropologists have been trained in a depth-oriented, culture-conscious and meaning-centered brand of medical and psychological anthropology which Good and his colleagues have cultivated at Harvard for the past few decades. Together with Arthur Kleinman, Byron Good also convenes the Friday Morning Seminar in Psychological Anthropology and Cultural Psychiatry.[ citation needed ]

Good served as head of Harvard Medical School's Department of Global Health and Social Medicine from 2000 to 2006. From 1986 to 2004 Byron Good served as editor-in-chief of the international journal Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry .

In 2013-2015 Good served as President of the Society for Psychological Anthropology. [5] Good delivered the 2010 Marett Memorial Lecture at Oxford University. [6]

Research

Good's recent research and studies the development of mental health services in various cultures, and primarily Indonesia, where he has been conducting research and teaching at the Faculty of Medicine, Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta over the past two decades. [7] He is principal investigator and co-director of the International Pilot Study of the Onset of Schizophrenia, which is a multi-site research project examining the social and cultural aspects of early phases of psychotic illness in various cultural contexts. [8] Good and his wife, Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, have also been working with the International Organization for Migration on developing mental health services in Aceh, a region where armed conflict and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami have had long-term psychological effects on survivors. [9]

Good's contributions to anthropological theory concern the concept of subjectivity in contemporary societies — specifically addressing the convergence of political, cultural, and psychological dimensions in subjective experience—and with a special focus on Indonesian cultural, political and historical context. [10] He has specifically investigated the ways in which culture and social processes shape the onset, the experience, and the course of psychotic illness, and the ways in which this relationship is embedded in and shaped by local, historical, and political contexts.

Selected publications

Books

  • 1994. Good, Byron J. Medicine, Rationality and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Translated and published in French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese.)

Edited volumes

  • 1985. Kleinman, Arthur and Byron Good, editors. Culture and Depression: Studies in the Anthropology and Cross‑Cultural Psychiatry of Affect and Disorder. Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care Series. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
  • 1992. Good, Mary-Jo D., Paul Brodwin, Byron J. Good, and Arthur Kleinman, eds. Pain as Human Experience: An Anthropological Perspective. Berkeley: U. of California Press.
  • 1995. Desjarlais, Robert, Leon Eisenberg, Byron J. Good, and Arthur Kleinman. World Mental Health: Problems and Priorities in Low Income Countries. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • 2004. Shweder, Richard and Byron J. Good, eds. Clifford Geertz by his Colleagues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Translated into Indonesian.)
  • 2005. Giarelli, Guido, Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Byron Good, eds. Clinical Hermeneutics. Bologna, Italy (in Italian only).
  • 2007. Biehl, Joao, Byron J. Good, and Arthur Kleinman, eds. Subjectivity: Ethnographic Investigations. University of California Press.
  • 2008. Good, Mary-Jo DelVecchio, Sandra Hyde, Sarah Pinto, and Byron Good, eds. Postcolonial Disorders. University of California Press.
  • 2009. Hinton, Devon and Byron Good, eds. Culture and Panic Disorder. Palo Alto: CA Stanford University Press.
  • 2010. Good, Byron J., Michael Fischer, Sarah Willen, Mary-Jo Good. A Reader in Medical Anthropology: Theoretical Trajectories, Emergent Realities. Wiley-Blackwell Publishers.
  • 2015. Devon Hinton and Byron Good, eds. Culture and PTSD. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Related Research Articles

A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitting, or occur as single episodes. Many disorders have been described, with signs and symptoms that vary widely between specific disorders. Such disorders may be diagnosed by a mental health professional, usually a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psychosis</span> Abnormal condition of the mind

Psychosis is a mental disorder caused by a person becoming disconnected from reality. Symptoms may include delusions and hallucinations, among other features. Additional symptoms are incoherent speech and behavior that is inappropriate for a given situation. There may also be sleep problems, social withdrawal, lack of motivation, and difficulties carrying out daily activities. Psychosis can have serious adverse outcomes.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Delusional disorder</span> Mental illness featuring beliefs with inadequate grounding

Delusional disorder is a mental illness in which a person has delusions, but with no accompanying prominent hallucinations, thought disorder, mood disorder, or significant flattening of affect. Delusions are a specific symptom of psychosis. Delusions can be bizarre or non-bizarre in content; non-bizarre delusions are fixed false beliefs that involve situations that could occur in real life, such as being harmed or poisoned. Apart from their delusion or delusions, people with delusional disorder may continue to socialize and function in a normal manner and their behavior does not necessarily generally seem odd. However, the preoccupation with delusional ideas can be disruptive to their overall lives.

Richard Bentall is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Sheffield in the UK.

Arthur Michael Kleinman is an American psychiatrist, social anthropologist and a professor of medical anthropology, psychiatry and global health and social medicine at Harvard University.

In medicine and medical anthropology, a culture-bound syndrome, culture-specific syndrome, or folk illness is a combination of psychiatric and somatic symptoms that are considered to be a recognizable disease only within a specific society or culture. There are no objective biochemical or structural alterations of body organs or functions, and the disease is not recognized in other cultures. The term culture-bound syndrome was included in the fourth version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders which also includes a list of the most common culture-bound conditions. Counterpart within the framework of ICD-10 are the culture-specific disorders defined in Annex 2 of the Diagnostic criteria for research.

Mental health in China is a growing issue. Experts have estimated that about 173 million people living in China are suffering from a mental disorder. The desire to seek treatment is largely hindered by China's strict social norms, as well as religious and cultural beliefs regarding personal reputation and social harmony.

Michael M. J. Fischer is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

Psychological anthropology is an interdisciplinary subfield of anthropology that studies the interaction of cultural and mental processes. This subfield tends to focus on ways in which humans' development and enculturation within a particular cultural group—with its own history, language, practices, and conceptual categories—shape processes of human cognition, emotion, perception, motivation, and mental health. It also examines how the understanding of cognition, emotion, motivation, and similar psychological processes inform or constrain our models of cultural and social processes. Each school within psychological anthropology has its own approach.

Cross-cultural psychiatry is a branch of psychiatry concerned with the cultural context of mental disorders and the challenges of addressing ethnic diversity in psychiatric services. It emerged as a coherent field from several strands of work, including surveys of the prevalence and form of disorders in different cultures or countries; the study of migrant populations and ethnic diversity within countries; and analysis of psychiatry itself as a cultural product.

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A psychiatric assessment, or psychological screening, is the process of gathering information about a person within a psychiatric service, with the purpose of making a diagnosis. The assessment is usually the first stage of a treatment process, but psychiatric assessments may also be used for various legal purposes. The assessment includes social and biographical information, direct observations, and data from specific psychological tests. It is typically carried out by a psychiatrist, but it can be a multi-disciplinary process involving nurses, psychologists, occupational therapist, social workers, and licensed professional counselors.

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References

  1. ↑ Gaines, Atwood D.; Davis-Floyd, Robbie (2003), "Biomedicine", in Ember, Carol R.; Ember, Melvin (eds.), Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology: Health and Illness in the World's Cultures Topics, vol. 1, Springer Science & Business Media, pp. 95–109, ISBN   978-0-306-47754-6
  2. ↑ Loewe, Ron (2003), "Illness Narratives", in Ember, Carol R.; Ember, Melvin (eds.), Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology: Health and Illness in the World's Cultures Topics, vol. 1, Springer Science & Business Media, p. 44, ISBN   978-0-306-47754-6
  3. ↑ "Byron J. Good". Scholars at Harvard. Harvard University. Retrieved 25 May 2016.
  4. ↑ "PhD Recipients". Department of Anthropology. The University of Chicago. 2015. Archived from the original on 7 April 2015. Retrieved 25 May 2016.
  5. ↑ Presidents Archived 2016-08-05 at the Wayback Machine , Society for Psychological Anthropology. Accessed May 25, 2016
  6. ↑ Marett Lectures Archived 2016-04-11 at the Wayback Machine , Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. Accessed May 25, 2016
  7. ↑ Good, Byron J.; Marchira, Carla; ul Hasanat, Nida; Utami, Mohama Sofiati; Subandi, And (2010), "Is 'Chronicity' Inevitable for Psychotic Illness?", in Manderson, Lenore; Smith-Morris, Carolyn (eds.), Chronic Conditions, Fluid States: Chronicity and the Anthropology of Illness, Rutgers University Press, pp. 54–76, ISBN   9780813549736
  8. ↑ "Byron J. Good". SHARP: Shanghai Archives of Psychiatry. Archived from the original on 11 June 2016. Retrieved 26 May 2016.
  9. ↑ Marc, Alexandre; Willman, Alys; Aslam, Ghazia; Rebosio, Michelle; Balasuriya, Kanishka (2012). Societal Dynamics and Fragility: Engaging Societies in Responding to Fragile Situations. World Bank Publications. pp. 184–5. ISBN   978-0-8213-9708-4 . Retrieved 26 May 2016.
  10. ↑ Pagis, Michael (January 2008). "Book Review: Subjectivity: Ethnographic Investigations". American Journal of Sociology. 113 (4). doi:10.1086/533571.
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