For this assignment you should interview someone from a different cultural background, of a different generation, or who has an ethnomedical system that is different from yours, with the intent of collecting an explanatory model of illness. Due to the nature of this assignment, you need to choose your interviewee(s) carefully: choose someone who is experiencing or has experienced an illness, and who is willing to talk with you in some depth about the illness. Get started early: you might find that an interviewee is not well-suited to this assignment, or you might decide to interview two different people. Use the questions set out by Arthur Kleinman on page 347 of the textbook (the “illness narrative”) as the foundation of your interview process. As you conduct your interview(s) think about other possibly useful questions you might ask, including those found in Kleinman’s “revised cultural formulation” (page 346-347), advice for how a medical practitioner might approach working with/healing someone with this particular health problem, or what has not been successful in your interviewee’s relationship with doctors or healers. In your essay, discuss why Kleinman thinks we should seek and collect explanatory models, and how they aid the health care provider and patient. Once you have completed your interviews, write up your findings, including your informant’s direct quotes and explanations when possible. Finally, in addition to writing an engaging, descriptive account of the explanatory model of illness that you collected, you should also write about other factors you think might contribute to, or complicate, your interviewee’s illness. For this aspect of the essay (about 2-3 pages), you should approach the explanatory model case study as an anthropologist and think about the role of societal, cultural, religious, socio-economic and other institutional conditions in the interviewee’s experience of illness. For example, you might consider writing about structural or symbolic violence, syndemics, the essentialization of women as reproducers, racism, poverty or class status, the powerful effects of stigma, and so forth. You do not have to prove that these are necessarily affecting your interviewee, but rather talk about which kinds of factors should be considered as possibilities, and why.
Important components of the psychiatric interview
Assignment Write a brief explanation (1 page) of three important components of the psychiatric interview and why you consider these elements important. Explain the psychometric properties of the rating scale you were assigned (Positive and negative symptom scale). Explain when it is appropriate to use this rating scale with clients during the psychiatric interview and […]
