Culture and Health offers an overview of different areas of culture and health, building on foundations of medical anthropology and health behavior theory. It shows how to address the challenges of cross-cultural medicine through interdisciplinary cultural-ecological models and personal and institutional developmental approaches to cross-cultural adaptation and competency. The book addresses the perspectives of clinically applied anthropology, trans-cultural psychiatry and the medical ecol...

This book provides a general introduction to the biological and evolutionary bases of religion and is suitable for introductory level courses in the anthropology and psychology of religion and comparative religion.Why did human ancestors everywhere adopt religious beliefs and customs? The presence and persistence of many religious features across the globe and time suggests that it is natural for humans to believe in the supernatural. In this new text, the authors explore both the ...

Led by a UCLA-trained health psychologist, a team of experts describes non-traditional treatments that are quickly becoming more common in Western society, documenting cultural variations in health and sickness practices to underscore the diversity among human society.This unique two-volume set describes the variety of cultural approaches to health practiced by people of varying cultural heritages and places them in stark context with traditional Western approaches...

A study of the effect of depression and psychiatry on Japanese society—"A triumph, perhaps even a classic" ( Times Higher Education, UK)."Fully engaged with the scholarly literature, and steeped in detail and description, this exemplary book is clearly the product of great care and careful listening and observation. With its high quality, simplicity, and eloquence, it is bound to become the book on depression in J...

Technical advances in the life and medical sciences have revolutionised our understanding of the brain, while the emerging disciplines of social, cognitive, and affective neuroscience continue to reveal the connections of the higher cognitive functions and emotional states associated with religious experience to underlying brain states. At the same time, a host of developing theories in psychology and anthropology posit evolutionary explanations for the ubiquity and persistence of religiou...

In this book, Kleinman proposes an international view of mental illness and mental care.Arthur Kleinman, M.D., examines how the prevalence and nature of disorders vary in different cultures, how clinicians make their diagnoses, and how they heal, and the educational and practical implications of a true understanding of the interplay between biology and culture.

New York Times bestselling author Sam Harris’s first book, The End of Faith, ignited a worldwide debate about the validity of religion. In the aftermath, Harris discovered that most people—from religious fundamentalists to non-believing scientists—agree on one point: science has nothing to say on the subject of human values. Indeed, our failure to address questions of meaning and morality through science has now become the primary justification for religious faith...

This positive psychology textbook focuses on the importance of the body within optimal functioning and highlights new research in this area.

The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Anxious Generation shows how a deeper understanding of the world’s philosophical wisdom can enrich and transform our lives.**“Wonderfully smart and readable.” —**Washington PostIn The Happiness Hypothesis, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt skillfully combines philosophical wisdom and sci...

Explore an ecological strength-based framework for the treatment of gender-variant clientsThis comprehensive book provides you with a clinical and theoretical overview of the issues facing transgendered/transsexual people and their families. Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and Their Families views assessment and treatment through a nonpathologizing lens that honors human diversity and acknowledges the role of oppression in the de...

It is only in the past 20 years that the concept of 'recovery' from mental health has been more widely considered and researched. Before then, it was generally considered that 'stability' was the best that anyone suffering from a mental disorder could hope for. But now it is recognised that, throughout their mental illness, many patients develop new beliefs, feelings, values, attitudes, and ways of dealing with their disorder. The notion of recovery from mental illness is thus rapidly bein...

Do religious experiences come from God, or are they merely the random firing of neurons in the brain? Drawing on his own research with Carmelite nuns, neuroscientist Mario Beauregard shows that genuine, life-changing spiritual events can be documented. He offers compelling evidence that religious experiences have a nonmaterial origin, making a convincing case for what many in scientific fields are loath to consider—that it is God who creates our spiritual experiences, not the brain.