Abstract
Research aimed at characterizing persons who are at high risk for developing psychotic illness has transformed our understanding of “prodromal” phases of illness and forms of attenuated psychosis syndromes. While the great majority of research in this field continues to be undertaken in Euro-American, Australian, and European societies with high mental health resources, a smaller body of work has translated instruments and research strategies for non-Western, low-resource settings. However, the lack of integration of inductive, phenomenological, and cultural/anthropological research in such settings limits our ability to address more fundamental questions about cross-cultural validity. This paper provides an overview of research conducted over more than 20 years in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, on early phases of psychotic illness in Javanese culture. This work demonstrates how early symptoms of psychotic illness enter into the Javanese cultural lifeworld, how they are experienced and responded to, and the implications of the cultural shaping of experience and social response for our understanding of those who are at high risk for developing a psychotic illness. It also suggests the importance of very rapid onset psychoses, demonstrated to be prevalent in some societies, and the difficulty of current research strategies for including acute onset illnesses within current studies. The paper concludes by suggesting the importance of cross-cultural and anthropological research for improving the validity of research strategies and the development of interventions.
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Acknowledgments
Research described here has been conducted over a 22-year period, with support from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Freeman Foundation, the Fogarty International Center, the US Agency for International Development, and the Harvard Center for Global Health Delivery – Dubai. We give special thanks to colleagues in Indonesia who have participated in and supported this research.
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Good, B.J., Marchira, C.R., Subandi, M.A., Nanwani, S., Good, MJ.D.V. (2019). Early Experiences of Psychotic Illness From a Cross-Cultural Perspective: An Anthropological View From Research in Indonesia. In: Li, H., Shapiro, D.I., Seidman, L.J. (eds) Handbook of Attenuated Psychosis Syndrome Across Cultures. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17336-4_7
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