Medicalizing Ethnicity : The Construction of Latino Identity in a Psychiatric Setting / Vilma Santiago-Irizarry.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Santiago-Irizarry, Vilma, author.

Series:

The Anthropology of Contemporary Issues Series

The Anthropology of Contemporary Issues

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Medicalization--New York (State)--New York.

Medicalization.

Ethnopsychology--New York (State)--New York.

Ethnopsychology.

Psychiatry, Transcultural--New York (State)--New York.

Psychiatry, Transcultural.

Hispanic Americans--Mental health services--New York (State)--New York.

Hispanic Americans.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 178 p. )

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In Medicalizing Ethnicity, Vilma Santiago-Irizarry shows how commendable intentions can produce unintended consequences. Santiago-Irizarry conducted ethnographic fieldwork in three bilingual, bicultural psychiatric programs for Latino patients at public mental health facilities in New York City. The introduction of "cultural sensitivity" in mental health clinics, she concludes, led doctors to construct essentialized, composite versions of Latino ethnicity in their drive to treat mental illness with sensitivity. The author demonstrates that stressing Latino differences when dealing with patients resulted not in empowerment, as intended, but in the reassertion of Anglo-American standards of behavior in the guise of psychiatric categories by which Latino culture was negatively defined. For instance, doctors routinely translated their patients' beliefs in the Latino religious traditions of espiritismo and Santería into psychiatric terms, thus treating these beliefs as pathologies.Interpreting mental health care through the framework of culture and politics has potent effects on the understanding of "normality" toward which such care aspires. At the core of Medicalizing Ethnicity is the very definition of multiculturalism used by a variety of institutional settings in an attempt to mandate equality.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. "It sounds like Hispanics stereotyping other Hispanics!"

2. Negotiating Ethnicity

3. Clinical Topographies

4. The "Mother Tongue" and the "Hispanic Character"

5. Occasions of Treatment

Conclusion: Medicalizing Ethnicity

Notes

References

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. 165-174) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 20. Sep 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781501718458

1501718452

OCLC:

1080549743