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Biomedical subjects

A Kleinman

Publications and source records attributed to A Kleinman.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Psychiatric morbidity in developing countries and American psychiatry's role in international health.

Economic and social change in the developing countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific Islands is associated with increased rates of behavior-related illnesses, including psychiatric disorders, alcoholism, and substance abuse. Between 10 and 20 percent of the presenting problems in primary care settings in those countries are psychosocial. The authors provide an overview of the epidemiology of psychiatric and psychosocial morbidity in developing countries and summarize its effect on medical care systems in those settings. They suggest that American psychiatry increase its involvement in improving mental health care in developing countries. Consultation should be directed toward priorities determined locally in those countries, including assessment of current clinical practices, applied epidemiologic research, and training of indigenous researchers.

Adolescent

Suffering and its professional transformation: toward an ethnography of interpersonal experience.

The authors define experience as an intersubjective medium of microcultural and infrapolitical processes in which something is at stake for participants in local worlds. Experience so defined mediates (and transforms) the relationship between context and person, meaning and psychobiology in health and illness and in healing. Building on this theoretical background, an approach to ethnography is illustrated through an analysis of suffering in Chinese society. The embodied memory of a survivor of serious trauma during the Cultural Revolution provides an example. From there, the authors go on to describe a framework of indigenous Chinese categories for the analysis of experience--mianzi (face), quanxi (connections), renqing (situated emotion), bao (reciprocity). The paper concludes with a discussion of the existential limits of this and other anthropological approaches to the study of experience as moral process.

Adult

[Biological success in osseointegrated implants].

Long term research results initiated by Dr. P. I. Branemark in 1965 and before, had widely demonstrated that with an adequate biomaterial, a phenomenon of biological acceptance from maxillary bone occurs, configurating a real bone healing, obtaining an intimate bonding between this alive tissue and the implant, which will last under function. Nevertheless, for this bio-physiological step happens and remain, there are many necessary factors named biological and biomechanical principles, and they command and are the responsibles of the osseointegration success.

Alveolar Process

A critical review of epidemiological studies of Puerto Rican mental health.

Through a review of the epidemiological literature on the mental health of Puerto Ricans and other Hispanics, the authors argue that lack of attention to cultural issues in epidemiological studies leaves many questions unanswered and raises concerns about the validity of studies in this area. The authors point out that the mental health status of Puerto Ricans in New York City is still poorly understood after 30 years of research. The roles of cultural response styles and of culturally meaningful expressions of distress in shaping responses to research interviews should be central concerns in developing research in cross-cultural psychiatry.

Cross-Cultural Comparison

Anthropology and psychiatry. The role of culture in cross-cultural research on illness.

To illustrate the contribution anthropology can make to cross-cultural and international research in psychiatry, four questions have been put to the cross-cultural research literature and discussed from an anthropological point of view: 'To what extent do psychiatric disorders differ in different societies?' 'Does the tacit model of pathogenicity/pathoplasticity exaggerate the biological aspects of cross-cultural findings and blur their cultural dimensions?' 'What is the place of translation in cross-cultural studies?' and 'Does the standard format for conducting cross-cultural studies in psychiatry create a category fallacy?' Anthropology contributes to each of these concerns an insistence that the problem of cross-cultural validity be given the same attention as the question of reliability, that the concept of culture be operationalised as a research variable, and that cultural analysis be applied to psychiatry's own taxonomies and methods rather than just to indigenous illness beliefs of native populations.

Anthropology, Cultural

The cultural meanings and social uses of illness. A role for medical anthropology and clinically oriented social science in the development of primary care theory and research.

Basic research that is conceptually and methodologically innovative and that fosters long-term research programs should play a role in the academic development of primary care, alongside more practical applied studies of specific clinical problems. A creative tension between the two has been a distinctive attribute of academic medicine and should be fostered in family medicine and other primary care disciplines. The biopsychosocial model offers a paradigm for the incorporation of clinically oriented social science research as one basic science approach in which primary care researchers can receive advanced training and pursue an academic career. The author briefly illustrates such a career with reference to studies (his own included) on the social uses and psychocultural meanings of illness. Somatization, a major problem in primary care, is illuminated by such a clinically applied social science research framework. Developing the scientific basis of an academic discipline involves intellectual education in systematic scholarship to create and critique concepts as much as it requires training in the application of rigorous research design and powerful statistical techniques.

Anthropology, Cultural

Depression and somatization: a review. Part II.

In Part I, the authors described the relationship between somatization and depression and the extent and rate of misdiagnosis of the problem of depression in primary care. A conceptual model was developed to explain the patient's selective perception and focus on the somatic manifestation of depression and the resulting misdiagnosis. In the first section, the sociocultural and childhood experience were reviewed as two major factors influencing the ability of the patient to perceive affective changes. In this second part, the authors review the influence of the developmental stage of the patient's cognitive mechanisms and the effect of the environmental systems in which the patient dwells, i.e., medical care, family and social network, work/disability and the sociopolitical institutions, on the recognition of affective, cognitive and somatic symptoms.

Adolescent

Some observations of mental illness and its treatment in the People's Republic of China.

A visit to the People's Republic of China provided impressions of the use of psychiatric concepts and the organization of mental health services. The Chinese report of low rates of mental illness appears to reflect narrow definitions of disorder and somatic expressions of personal and social distress which are viewed by health personnel as physical conditions. Acute mental health services are provided at commune and county hospitals, and special psychiatric hospitals are maintained for more intractable patients. Chronically disturbed patients may receive long term care in sanatoriums associated with large industries or may be maintained in home beds in their production brigades assisted by family and barefoot doctors. Psychiatric practice in teaching hospitals is similar to psychiatric practice in the West, although little attention is devoted in general medical care to psychosocial problems. Question for future visits and possible collaborative research are suggested.

Adult

Clinical relevance of anthropological and cross-cultural research: concepts and strategies.

The author presents a method through which findings from anthropological and cross-cultural research can be applied to problems affecting patient care. The clinical social science approach emphasizes the distinction between disease and illness and cultural influences on the ways "clinical reality" is conflictingly construed in the ethnomedical models of patients and the biomedical models of practitioners. The relevance of such research extends beyond special clinical concerns arising from ethnic differences to ubiquitous problems that result from cultural influences on all aspects of health care. Consultation-liaison psychiatry is a particularly appropriate vehicle for introducing clinical social science into medical and psychiatric teaching and practice.

Anthropology, Cultural

Culture, illness, and care: clinical lessons from anthropologic and cross-cultural research.

Major health care problems such as patient dissatisfaction, inequity of access to care, and spiraling costs no longer seem amenable to traditional biomedical solutions. Concepts derived from anthropologic and cross-cultural research may provide an alternative framework for identifying issues that require resolution. A limited set of such concepts is described as illustrated, including a fundamental distinction between disease and illness, and the notion of the cultural construction of clinical reality. These social science concepts can be developed into clinical strategies with direct application in practice and teaching. One such strategy is outlined as an example of a clinical social science capable of translating concepts from cultural anthropology into clinical language for practical application. The implementation of this approach in medical teaching and practice requires more support, both curricular and financial.

Adult