Conflict, Culture, and Mental Health

The Centre for Urban Mental Health is organizing a series of online lectures to highlight expertise and current thinking on complexity science and urban mental health.

At the Centre for Urban Mental Health, we aim to unravel new pathways to improve urban mental health that takes into account the complexities and dynamics of mental health problems and mental health disorders in an urban environment.

Schedule:

Presentation: 30 minutes

Q & A: 15 - 20 minutes

The Q & A session will be based on questions from the audience.

About Dr. Kristen Syme:

Dr. Kristen Syme has a PhD in evolutionary anthropology from Washington State University, and is a postdoc at VU Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Her research interests broadly concern the evolved interpersonal functions of psychological and behavioral phenomena. Her MA thesis tested two evolutionary models of suicidal behavior against the ethnographic record, and her dissertation research is a continuation of this project. She is presently conducting an exploratory investigation on bargaining strategies and parent-offspring conflict with an immigrant Micronesian population in the Vancouver WA/Portland, OR area.

Abstract:

Popular Western narratives of depression frame it as a disease that is caused by a ‘chemical imbalance’ in the brain. This model, however, is not supported by empirical evidence. Data from western and non-western societies instead indicate that depression and suicidality are closely associated with, and likely caused by, adversity, conflict, and powerlessness. A cross-cultural investigation of suicidality further revealed that suicide threats, attempts, and deaths were usually preceded by conflicts, such as forced or thwarted marriages, with powerful others such as elder kinsmen. Taking an evolutionary theoretical approach, together with her collaborators she has proposed that depression and suicidality are functional responses to conflict and adversity that, like pain, indicate the presence of threats and motivate change in social partners. Across societies, psychological distress is often treated in the context of public rituals that draw attention to common conflicts and the social vulnerability of the distressed. Furthermore, often the powerful with whom the distressed are in conflict provide material compensation. Dr. Kristen Syme discusses the implications of these findings for depression and suicidality in Western settings.

Please use the following Zoom link to join the lecture: https://uva-live.zoom.us/j/81163211827